A free community Garden Fair was held today in Balboa Park celebrating Pollinator Week!
Local organizations that support our natural environment were lined up outside the San Diego Natural History Museum, providing the public with information about native plants and wildlife.
While pollinating bees and butterflies flitted about flowering plants in the Natural History Museum’s nearby nature trail, visitors to the park were learning about how they can help maintain a beautiful and healthy environment.
I walked around the museum to check things out…
Yes! Ecologik is included in a Women in STEM exhibit at the San Diego History Center!There are well over 500 species of bees native to San Diego! They can detect tastes with their front feet!Don’t we all love a clean San Diego? Of course we do!Many informative displays concerning pollinators and our natural environment.I see flowers and pollinators (including a bat) on this table!The San Diego Chapter of the California Native Plant Society is a great resource. They welcome new members!I didn’t know there’s a Paradise Hills Native Garden. I’ll have to check it out!The San Diego River Park Foundation had a table with great information.Volunteers with the San Diego Natural History Museum were providing a tour of their nature trail in Balboa Park.More exhibitors on the museum’s Moreton Bay Fig tree side.San Diego Canyonlands had some native pollinators on display.Hello to the Master Gardener Association of San Diego County!And hello to the San Diego Bird Alliance! They were demonstrating a native seed library. Create your own!You can help save Monarch butterflies by planting milkweed seeds.Endangered Concepts has repurposed unrecyclable plastic. The plastic fills decorative boulders! Clever idea!Learning at the California Native Horticultural Foundation table.Hey, NAT Garden Corps–this Garden Fair is a very cool event! That’s milkweed people can plant.
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You’ve probably seen those book lending libraries placed near the sidewalk in front of homes. The boxes are filled with books that anyone can borrow.
Well, did you know there are similar native seed libraries?
Native seed libraries like the one in my photographs provide free native plant seeds for community members to use in their gardens.
As we know, native plants in San Diego are drought resistant and attract pollinators such as butterflies and birds. They’re good for biodiversity and a healthy environment.
If creating your own native seed library is something you’d like to look into, or do, check out this webpage on the San Diego Bird Alliance website. They provide starter kits that include seeds, envelopes, labels, brochures, posters and other materials for your box. Building the structure is your own fun project! (Perhaps make them similar to one of these.)
If you’ve walked around San Diego’s Balboa Park in the past week, you might have noticed fencing has appeared all around the newly renovated Botanical Building. Phase 2 of the Botanical Building and Gardens revitalization is now underway!
Lush gardens are to be planted all around the Botanical Building! Even behind it!
The new landscaping will be receiving a $10 million makeover, with nine themed garden spaces. You can get an idea of how things might appear when all is said and done by visiting this Forever Balboa Park webpage.
Phase 2 includes installing dozens of historically accurate benches near fountains and around the Lily Pond, and recreating a grand pergola to match the one that disappeared during the federal government’s wartime takeover.
It’s hard to imagine how the Botanical Building in Balboa Park could become even more beautiful. But it’s going to happen!
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
One of my favorite plant shows in Balboa Park is presented twice a year by the San Diego Cactus & Succulent Society. Their 2025 Summer Show and Sale is happening this weekend, so I had to check it out!
As always the event is attracting big crowds. When I visited, one of the Casa del Prado’s outdoor patios was bustling with people making purchases of cacti, succulents, pottery, and more.
Inside Casa del Prado’s Room 101, long tables are overflowing with hundreds of incredible plants. The show is free to the public.
I love how cacti and succulents can have so many different forms, and how a prickly plant can boast some of the most bright, brilliant flowers! I tried to take good photographs of the unique beauty.
If you maintain a garden in San Diego, or would love to learn more about plants or gardening, you need to know about a very special library that is open to the public in Balboa Park. The San Diego Floral Association Library, located in Room 105 of the Casa del Prado, contains over 3,500 books filled with horticultural and gardening knowledge!
The San Diego Floral Association Library and Office is located down a short hallway beyond Balboa Park’s Senior Lounge. On a table just outside its entrance, one comes across an informative bulletin board and a table covered with all sorts of free printed material. I once was lucky and found the book-like California Garden Centennial Compilation 1909-2009, which is jam-packed with San Diego history and articles from past decades–a real treasure!
The San Diego Floral Association is home of California Garden magazine. It is the oldest horticulture magazine in continuous publication in the United States!
Inside the library you’ll find shelves full of books and valuable references. You’ll also see walls covered with beautiful paintings!
Looking around, I recognized several images of Kate Sessions, one of the San Diego Floral Association’s founders. Because she was instrumental in making Balboa Park a botanical wonder, she is commonly referred to as Mother of Balboa Park. (The book The Complete Writings of Kate Sessions in California Garden is also available for purchase. It would make a great gift!)
The smiling lady with whom I spoke was so very welcoming. She explained how the San Diego Floral Association hosts many fun and educational events, plus they have a gardening outreach program with San Diego schools.
If you are so inclined, become a member! Perhaps assist their efforts and volunteer! Members have the privilege of checking out library books for home use.
To see everything they have to offer, I encourage you to visit the San Diego Floral Association’s website by clicking here.
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
A beautiful native plant garden can be enjoyed at the Sikes Adobe Farmhouse in Escondido. The garden is on the grounds of the historic farmstead, directly next to the San Dieguito River Park’s long Coast to Crest Trail.
I visited the native plant garden during a walk today and took these photographs. I noticed a sign indicating it was an Eagle Scout Service Project, undertaken in 2021 by Matthew VanderVorst of Escondido Troop 668.
It’s late Spring, so many flowers are in bloom. Signs identify the plants, which include Monkey Flower, Deerweed, Bladder Pod, Black Sage, White Sage, California Buckwheat, Shaw’s Agave, Coastal Prickly Pear, and others.
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
Anyone having a bad day should step into Dave’s Rock Garden in Encinitas.
Thousands of colorfully painted stones in the garden radiate with happiness and positivity. For those with an open heart, it’s an awesome, uplifting experience.
Dave’s Rock Garden can be found at the corner of B Street and 2nd Street, a short distance from Moonlight State Beach. Paths into the garden invite people who might be walking down the nearby sidewalk.
“Bringing Unity to our Community” states the website that describes Dave’s Rock Garden. Bringing unbounded creativity and joy would also be appropriate!
The garden had a humble beginning. In 2015 David Dean picked up trash and pulled weeds on this sliver of abandoned public property. A painted stone that he discovered led to inspired efforts that have resulted in what visitors see today.
What did I see when I visited earlier this year? I took photos…
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
This morning the Alcazar Garden in Balboa Park was filled with activity. The City of San Diego Parks and Recreation Department and volunteers belonging to the Balboa Park Garden Stewards were planting hundreds of flowers!
The new flowers will fill the garden’s large beds in time for summer and Memorial Day weekend!
Thank you to everyone with sore backs and dirty knees for making San Diego’s crown jewel even more beautiful!
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
Perhaps you’d like to join Balboa Park’s volunteer Rose Garden Corps. You’ll help beautify the world-class Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden!
I saw a small army of volunteers today in the rose garden, pruning, weeding, raking and fertilizing, while enjoying the San Diego sunshine. Rose Garden Corps members work Tuesdays or Thursday in the morning, and there is a monthly meeting.
If you think you’d like to join the Rose Garden Corps, check out this webpage to learn all about it!
Incidentally, the rose garden is in peak bloom right now. It’s spectacular!
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
A very busy Mother’s Day in Balboa Park included the San Diego Epiphyllum Society’s annual flower show and sale. I strolled through the Casa del Prado’s Room 101 and was wowed by hundreds of incredibly beautiful, very colorful blooms.
The web page describing the show claims SDES’s annual Mother’s Day Show is the ultimate Epi Flower Show in the country. I can see why!
The San Diego Epiphyllum Society is celebrating their 55th anniversary, and there were floral displays that proudly announced it! There were Mother’s Day displays, too, and many others that were artistic, or that provided useful information.
The flowers themselves were the star of the show!
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
Cool San Diego Sights! 