California GArden Archives

Roots from California Garden
Profiles in Horticultural History

© SAN DIEGO FLORAL ASSOCIATION

These stories may not be published in any form or copied onto another media without written permission from San Diego Floral Association.

Reprinted From: July/August 2017  Volume 107 No. 4

Katherine Davies Jones
(1860-1943)

By Nancy Carol Carter 

In a log cabin on the ragged edge of the American frontier, Katherine Jones was born in Berlin, Wisconsin. The fast-growing out-post offered good farm land and work in quarries, but it was religion that brought the Joneses from Wales. Both parents were teachers and singers. Katherine’s father was a Congregationalist minister assigned to establish churches in newly settled areas. Middle daughter Katherine gained practical horticulture experience from a young age, because she and her six siblings were responsible for raising food for the family. 

Jones apparently received encouragement to pursue her education, but had to start work at age 16. She taught classes each summer, but managed to complete high school and enroll at the University of Nebraska. After just one year of college, her mother’s illness required a suspension of Jones’ formal education. 

The entire family relocated to Murphy’s Camp in California’s Calavaras Country in 1880 and later settled in South Vallejo. Katherine Jones again worked as a teacher, first in her own private academy, then for six years in the local public school. 

Hard-earned Educations

Katherine’s earnings helped one of her younger brothers complete a college degree. Then, long before the returning older student was common on college campuses, the determined Katherine Jones resumed her own education, enrolling in 1893 and graduating at age 36 from the University of California in 1896 with a concentration in botany and biology. 

Jones taught biology and music for one year in the town of Hayward, then returned to Berkeley where her maturity and past academic performance led to a university appointment. She became a teaching aid for classes in botany and zoology and an administrator for the Botany Department. Jones also assisted the U.S. Forest Service in identifying California trees and shrubs and worked for the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Plant Industry which had established research stations across the country. She reported to Professor Arnold Valentine Studbenrauch, who headed a long-running Bureau of Forestry fieldwork assignment to identify and classify native and exotic acacias. 

Landscape Architecture: A New Field of Study

Harvard University established the first degree program in landscape architecture in 1900. The University of California became the fifth school to offer a similar program, creating the Division of Landscape Gardening and Floriculture within the College of Agriculture in 1913. 

A four-year degree program with both practical and theoretical instruction was developed at Berkeley by Assistant Professor John W. Gregg. The first person he hired to instruct students was Katherine Jones. Her job title was “Assistant,” then later, “Associate in Landscape Gardening.” In 1921 she was promoted to Instructor. She taught plant materials and instituted a popular and long-running outdoor field course in which students learned to identify trees and shrubs. 

Co-educational colleges had few woman instructors in 1913, and possibly no others in the agriculture and landscape programs, but it was later said that “Miss Jones was not only the logical person to teach plant materials, she was the only one trained in the work.” Before she retired in 1930, many of California’s famous landscape architects-to-be, including Thomas Church and Garrett Eckbo, had completed her course as part of their Berkeley studies. 

Sharing Knowledge 

Katherine Jones produced many scholarly and popular writings. Cornell University horticulture professor Liberty Hyde Bailey turned to her when seeking an expert to write the “Acacia” entry for his landmark Cyclopedia of American Horticulture. She worked with the head of the Landscape Gardening and Floriculture program, John W. Gregg, and a third author to produce the Cyclopedia’s entry on “Vines for California.” 

With the same co-authors, Jones developed a 1917 guide for the State Board of Education: Plant Materials for School Grounds in California. She contributed chapters to landscape architecture books and wrote pamphlets and articles on various topics, including drought tolerant shrubs and New Zealand plants appropriate for California gardens. Jones also carried out field work in the high Sierras and elsewhere, studying native plants and contributing specimen sheets to the University of California herbarium. 

A San Diego Connection

Katherine Jones built a network of professional contacts around the state, including San Diego horticulturist Kate O. Sessions. They had several mutual acquaintances and many common interests, but their initial meeting and frequency of contact is undocumented. Jones and Sessions were near contemporaries in age and each earned science degrees at Berkeley (but not as classmates). Both began their working lives as school teachers, then struck out to pioneer successful careers in male-dominated professions. 

After moving to San Diego, Sessions returned to Oakland regularly to visit her parents and friends. In November 1912 it was reported that she was “renewing contacts” with Katherine Jones and meeting new university faculty at Berkeley. More than 20 years later, Katherine Jones was in San Diego, visiting Sessions and accompanying her to a San Diego Floral Association picnic at the elaborate Arts and Crafts home and garden of Amy Strong in Ramona. 

Presumably there were many other unreported meetings between Jones and Sessions over the years. The influence each had on the other is unknowable, but Jones surely appreciated Sessions’ practical experience and empirical knowledge of plants. For her part, Sessions always respected academic research and the work of trained botanists. Jones wrote an early work on vines for California gardens and vines were a landscape favorite of Sessions. Likewise, Jones developed early expertise on acacias, and Sessions both introduced varieties of the plant and wrote about acacias on multiple occasions. Sessions mentioned “useful and valuable” writings by Jones in a 1936 California Garden article. The known facts point to a mutually valuable professional friendship, lasting well into old age. Each lived to be 83. Sessions died in 1940 and Jones in 1943.

Katherine Davies Jones

Botanist, Author,
University Instructor of Landscape Gardening 

Born 1860Died 1943

Berlin, WisconsinBerkeley, California

Dig deeper with:

Mabel Symmes, “Katherine Davies Jones,” Madroño 8:6 (April 1946), 184-87.

© SAN DIEGO FLORAL ASSOCIATION and © Nancy Carol Carter.
These stories may not be published in any form or copied onto another media without written permission from San Diego Floral Association.