Tag: gardening

Volunteers beautify a Balboa Park garden!

A group of volunteer Garden Stewards were busy in Balboa Park today working in the Casa del Rey Moro Garden!

Garden Stewards were trimming plants, pulling weeds, sweeping away debris, and contributing to the celebrated beauty of this elegant Moorish garden behind the House of Hospitality.

When you walk through Balboa Park, especially on a weekend, there’s a good chance you’ll see these volunteers working in one or more of the park’s eighteen gardens. Their efforts supplement work performed by City of San Diego Parks and Recreation Department employees.

Now that Spring is here, expect to see happy Garden Stewards working their magic among many colorful flowers! Say hello! They like that!

Do you love sunshine, plants and flowers? Do you live in San Diego? Would you like to become a Garden Steward and magnify the beauty of our city? Check out this web page to learn more!

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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 (formerly known as Twitter)!

A free Bird Friendly Home and Garden Fair!

A free “Bird Friendly Home and Garden Fair” will be open to the public this coming Sunday, February 25, 2024. It’s part of San Diego Audubon’s big five-day San Diego Bird Festival, which is presently underway at the Marina Village Conference Center!

The Bird Friendly Home and Garden Fair will feature local organizations and businesses that help you help birds. There will be exhibitor booths, educational presentations, and people can build a bluebird nesting box for the California Bluebird Recovery Project. The program schedule includes a family music program and a live birds of prey presentation. There will be information about native seed libraries, what to do if you find an injured or baby bird, and much more!

To read more about this unique weekend event, click here and scroll down. You can participate in other San Diego Bird Festival activities, too!

(If you’re curious about the above photograph–that’s a Great Blue Heron that was perched in a tree above the San Diego River. I spotted it yesterday while walking across the pedestrian bridge near the Fashion Valley transit center.)

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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 (formerly known as Twitter)!

Downloadable maps of Balboa Park’s Australian Garden.

Three years ago I posted a blog titled Balboa Park’s hidden Australian Garden. You can read it here.

I’ve learned the San Diego Floral Association has downloadable maps of this large, little-known garden. The two maps show where different species of plants and trees (that were donated by the government of Australia for the United States Bicentennial) are planted.

Click here for a .pdf map of the Australian Garden’s lower area, which stretches along Paseo del Oro in Gold Gulch. There are different species of Acacia, Brachychiton, Eucalyptus, Grevillea, Melaleuca, and many others.

For a map of the upper area, where you can observe more beautiful plants below Presidents Way, click here.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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 (formerly known as Twitter)!

Spread kindness and love in Escondido!

Your opportunity to spread love and kindness in Escondido is coming in early February!

Love Esco is a community effort kicking off this weekend that offers a range of service projects whereby volunteers beautify and improve Escondido!

Many of the projects require no special skill and provide necessary tools. You can help a food pantry, engage in neighborhood cleanups, donate blood, bake treats for first responders, help create school gardens, provide encouragement… Click here to see all of the volunteering opportunities, then sign up!

The Love Esco Day Kick-Off Party is this Saturday, February 3, 8am-10am at Grape Day Park. You can meet World Cup Champion Shannon MacMillan and radio host Jesse Lozano. There will be giveaways, entertainment and a whole lot of inspiration!

I plan to be there!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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 (formerly known as Twitter)!

Art at Wellness Garden in Southeast San Diego.

A beautiful new Wellness Garden opened last year in Southeast San Diego!

The sunny, park-like space, filled with colorful art, is located outside the new Southeastern Live Well Center in Valencia Park. The garden can be freely accessed by anyone via a pathway on the south side of the large health and social services facility.

A plaque near the pathway indicates that the garden’s public art was created by Jean Cornwell Wheat. It’s titled Spirit of the Community featuring Bird Song. Additional information is provided:

Commissioned; painted and mosaic embellished totems; concrete, poured resin, lime stones.

Artist Statement: These totems represent the community cultures of African American, Mexican/Chicano, Latin American, Filipino, Polynesian, and Asian. The final meditation totem is the artist’s personal statement of peace, love and unity. The centerpiece, Bird Song, represents the Kumeyaay Nation’s symbol of the oak tree. Images on the four sides symbolize earth, air, fire, and water.

Across the Market Street from the Southeastern Live Well Center, at the Malcolm X Branch Library and Performing Arts Center, a beautiful mosaic was created by the same artist. You can see it by clicking here.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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 (formerly known as Twitter)!

A little known, unmapped park in La Mesa.

There’s a small park in La Mesa that is little known and unmapped, even while hundreds of cars pass it by every day. This park doesn’t appear on Google Maps. There is no record of it on the internet. (Until now!)

According to a plaque near the center of the grassy park, embedded in a boulder among plants and flowers, this beautiful place is called George Felix Memorial Park.

It is located where La Mesa Boulevard meets University Avenue.

The old plaque reads:

THE GEORGE FELIX MEMORIAL PARK

DEDICATED IN MEMORY OF

GEORGE FELIX

1934 – 2002

IN RECOGNITION OF HIS COMMITMENT TO THE CITIZENS OF LA MESA THROUGH HIS TIRELESS EFFORTS FOR THE BETTERMENT OF THE COMMUNITY

DEDICATED JULY 17, 2002

Walk through the park and you’ll find this bench:

Plants donated by La Mesa Beautiful, Inc. 1987

A beautiful rose at George Felix Memorial Park in La Mesa.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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 (formerly known as Twitter)!

Finding winter beauty in the Zoro Garden.

Visitors to Balboa Park during the winter might walk past the sunken Zoro Garden without seeing its enduring beauty.

On a cold, gray day late in the year, fallen leaves, puddles and a big patch of bare dirt might seem the main attraction of this stone grotto garden. But those who stroll down any of the winding pathways will discover small flowers, surprising color, and perhaps gleaming raindrops on bright green leaves.

Please enjoy these photographs. I took them today on a New Year’s Eve walk through Balboa Park. It had been drizzling earlier in the day.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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 (formerly known as Twitter)!

Clean and Safe readies for the holidays!

Poinsettias have appeared on street corners in downtown San Diego. Festive lights and banners along sidewalks anticipate another holiday season!

This morning I came upon a Downtown San Diego Partnership Clean and Safe worker planting poinsettias along Fifth Avenue in the Gaslamp Quarter. He smiled for a photo!

Thank you to those who strive to keep our city clean and safe. Downtown residents like myself are especially grateful.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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 (formerly known as Twitter)!

Free trees on Saturday in Balboa Park!

Kate Sessions, the Mother of Balboa Park, holds a pine cone by the grass.

This Saturday, November 4, visitors to Balboa Park can pick up a free tree sapling to plant at home. The distribution of free trees is part of Forever Balboa Park’s two-day event Plant It Forward 2023: Growing Our Urban Forest.

Forever Balboa Park will be handing out 100 tree saplings in the Plaza de Panama from 9 am to noon. (First come first served, one sapling per household.) In the afternoon there will be a park cleanup that you can join, if you’d like.

Learn about the Plant It Forward event, the free trees and park cleanup by visiting this website. (You’ll also find videos about tree planting, choosing the appropriate tree, and more.)

Help grow San Diego’s urban forest! Plant your own shady, beautiful tree!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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 (formerly known as Twitter)!

Amazing cactus and succulent garden in El Cajon!

There’s a special garden filled with rare and beautiful plants in downtown El Cajon. The Southwest Cactus and Succulent Garden is open free to the public at the Olaf Wieghorst Museum.

This very fine garden stretches between the museum’s main building and the old, relocated house of Olaf Wieghorst, a renowned artist who lived in El Cajon. (His paintings depicting the Old West are celebrated inside the museum.)

Over 200 species of desert plants–some of them quite rare–can be enjoyed by those who wander about the garden. The amazing garden is curated by Mike Bostwick, former horticultural director of the San Diego Zoo.

There are shady places in the garden where you can relax or perhaps have a picnic. There are sculptures, too, including an exceptional one by James Hubbell. A plant sale containing rare specimens is also open to the public. Proceeds support the museum.

What’s more, the garden space can be rented for special events such as private parties or weddings.

The Southwest Cactus and Succulent Garden is accessible to visitors when the Olaf Wieghorst Museum is open. See the location, days and hours here.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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 (formerly known as Twitter)!