Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
Available On Air Stations
Watch Live

KPBS Midday Edition

'A Growing Passion' Begins Third Season With Focus On Balboa Park

KPBS A Growing Passion Host Nan Sterman talks to Balboa Park Ranger Kim Duclo about the Kauri pine tree next to the Mingei Museum in Balboa Park in this undated photo.
KPBS A Growing Passion Host Nan Sterman talks to Balboa Park Ranger Kim Duclo about the Kauri pine tree next to the Mingei Museum in Balboa Park in this undated photo.
'A Growing Passion' Begins Third Season With Focus On Balboa Park
A Growing Passion Begins Its Third Season On KPBS With A Focus On Balboa Park GUESTS:Nan Sterman, host, "A Growing Passion" Kim Duclo, ranger, Balboa Park

One of Midday Edition's most popular guests expert Nan Sterman has become a bit of a fixture on KPBS television. Her third series of the city the series growing passion begins this Thursday celebrating this centennial at Balboa Park by examining the incredible variety of plant, flowers and trees in the gardens of the part. It seems the gardens have influenced San Diegans for generations. Joining the is Nan Sterman host of the KPBS series A Growing Passion. Good to see you. Fun to be here, thank you. And Balboa Park Ranger Kim Duclo or should I call you Ranger? Whatever you like. I will go back and forth. Nan starting out the season in Balboa Park pretty much an obvious choice but what does Balboa Park represent about San Diego's passion for gardening? Oh my gosh you have to watch the show to get an idea but if you are visiting Balboa Park and you look around and step off the parking travel to San Diego our landscape emulates the park. No question about it the landscape of San Diego emulates the park landscape it is what everyone looks to the model over many years it has become a model for what our landscape looks like. Another were special gardens created and designed for the 1915 Panama California exposition, we know the park's architecture was designed to showcase our region Spanish influence. Nan what were the landscape architects trying to highlight? They really weren't landscape architects, tran10, correct me me if I'm wrong. Initially but they stepped away they only said they were going to be involved because some of their advice was not being followed. It felt to Bertram Goodley the architect de facto landscape architect but really just plants men from the most part if you can consider it was almost like a new housing development you have the model homes going up a look a little funny without plants around them so they brought in literally millions of plants and started panting like crazy around the exposition building. When you read about the intent, their intent was for the buildings and landscape to have equal value. They wanted lush gardens. Of the visitor wasn't in the building they were in a landscape garden stroll in between enjoying the time outside in the beautiful gardens. Today, yes, we tend to value more about the buildings but then it was equal. In fact a lot of the purpose of exposition itself was to show off San Diego as a climate for horticulture and agriculture there were model gardens , model farms actually that showed how on an acre of land you could basically have a homestead and there were all kinds of features we were just talking before we got to the studio when we started working on this episode I thought I kind of new with the story would be. I had no idea. I had absolutely no idea this so much grander bigger than I ever dreamed it would be. And give us an example these model farms each had an orchard model bungalows so the wife would have a place to discover modern appliances , all with the zoo is now. Those are completely gone. In between there and the botanical building which is the Lily Pond, there was a tea house and actually implanting of tea camellias in that area to show that was a plate you could grow here, too and where tea comes from. There is Palm Canyon, so many different gardens created. The Montezuma garden which now we call Alcazar. The Montezuma garden which got remodeled in 1935 became the Alcazar Garden. All of those gardens, their weight in exposition was so much more than I had begun to imagine. So much of an integral part of it and that is not something I think is commonly realized. Ranger Duclo you are familiar with what Nan has been saying about the way the gardens are laid out in the park and a major influence that has had on San Diego's gardens all around the city and County. S-uppercase-letter an example if you would, when you see somebody's front garden or elaborate backyard garden and you look at that, what makes you think somebody got an idea from up Balboa Park? Pixel much of it is because we are blessed to live in a Mediterranean climate not very many people in the world day of and the park going back to the session certainly has been placed to both experiment and showcase and try out things in many cases from those other regions on Earth that share our Mediterranean climate. Sort of mix and match what works. No surprise if you go to any neighborhoods immediately bordering the park it's almost like it just flows continuously into that and the further you go out throughout time you see that influence as well. The other great thing is you can almost date neighborhoods by the plant material the use because things come in and out of vogue not only within the park but usually if it's tried on the park and people like what they see, you'll see quickly in the nursery trade and commercial areas so the park especially since it has nearly 150 your history now is this wonderful sort of historic repository of different layers of things from. Moreton Bay fig tree one of the things left over from the original exposition and one of the last things from the formal garden when it was a very much a small part of 1000 other plants in an area and now it is sort of the loan said no left behind. Is a garden designer when you look at the way the gardens are designed late out in Balboa Park to think straight you as perhaps old-fashioned or things not done the same way these days? A lot of it for example in the Alcazar Garden , the garden beds a very formal each is edged in a box which hedge so it is a low hedge and inside the box would the plantings change depending on the season. We don't do that kind of formal garden anymore and are gardens are much more free-flowing and much more naturalistic. That is a very -- rectilinear things are much more angled focal points at each intersection a fountain or something like that. And love, I appreciate that that greatly but I don't do it in my garden or other gardens and there are a lot of parts of the park to my eye I wouldn't do in a private garden because they are too resource intensive or water intensive but a park is different. Park is a place where people come together and it is community use. To me a park like that , Balboa Park not necessarily a neighborhood park but Balboa Park is a place where it makes sense to have a fast lawn because you have thousands of people that use it it is like having a community pool. There is a lot about the park I wouldn't do now but it makes sense for the park. Along the same lines you would saying that -- you were saying an experimental lab for plants in Balboa Park what -- which of those experiments hasn't worked too well? In some ways I think every one in the West with a number once upon a time with eucalyptus because it was something you could grow quickly , it grew spectacularly large with very little help and not a whole lot of water and once upon a time it was hard to remember but before petroleum products everyone but eucalyptus would be this ideal timber source, but it missed its true calling by a few generations and I was and now we have seen a bit of decline in certain eucalyptus. There are hundreds of kinds of people at -- eucalyptus but we plant beautiful, diminutive smaller types of eucalyptus but pretty rare you see us put something that will grow to be 150 feet or taller these days anymore. To follow a little on something Nan said as well, the formal nature of Alcazar Garden New York still experimenting because right now it is part of an adopt a plot program which is an exciting thing the park department has leveraged people's passion for gardening here and invited them in to some of the areas in the park that are prominent, some small, some large and invited them to basically adopt the area for the year. An officer guarded missile has the rectilinear formal boxwood hedges but has a beautiful planting design all kinds of groups working in their and affecting other parts of the park you will see that in evidence especially if I can put a plug-in may nine we will have the garden party of the century at Balboa Park which will really showcase gardening in the region really with the park is doing stepping up to the plate and reimagining itself for the next 100 years. Balboa Park in the Centennial is a focal point for the first show of the new season of A Growing Passion what are some of the topics coming up in the next week? Some great shows. We have a show on how plants come to market. When you walk into a nursery and picked up a 1 gallon or 5-gallon container with a beautiful plant you to get home and put in your garden and you kind of think maybe the nursery man or woman where did it come from maybe they grew in the back 40 or something you don't really think about that but the story of how the plants and up in the marketplace is a very complicated story that starts with breeders some of whom work for decades on a single plant and make different versions of it. There is many steps. It is a whole industry for breeding and propagating a marketing plan and it is very interesting and has a very strong roots in San Diego County County. We go to all those different places and show you behind the scenes what it takes to bring a new plant to market. I promise that is much more sophisticated and interesting than you ever expected. How much if at all the drought has influenced subjects you will cover the season? We have a show on water and the flow of water again one of those things we don't think much about you turn on the spigot , water comes out you know you need to save it that what is that water come from? Where does it originate? How does it make its way from Sierra Nevada to the caller River to our forms to our garden to grow the things that we need to eat and also enjoy in our surroundings. This is something we really need to have a much better understanding of and we have gone to the Colorado River, Lake Havasu, the pumping pumping stations we been up to where the snow melt from the Sierra Nevada begins its journey to the South. It is kind of scary, not much there. All of these topics ahead as this season of A Growing Passion continues I want to ask you one last question about this first episode. When you go to Balboa Park and East the magnificent gardens, are there this late date still things that just regular gardeners can learn? Absolutely in fact the article I have I think next Saturday lessons from Balboa Park, there are wonderful lessons if I could just mention one of them. When you walk along the product if you look -- along the Prado if you look at the garden beds, along the north side it is almost all palms and on the south side of the shade loving plants the South gets shaded from the north but you can look at plant selection and what is going in each one and also the whole practice of massing plants there is not one of these, what of these there is masses of the same and that gives you the unity and consistency and beauty. I want to let everyone know the primary of the new season of A Growing Passion is this Thursday night at 8:00 on KPBS television. I have been speaking with Balboa Park Ranger Kim Duclo and Nan Sterman the host of the KPBS series A Growing Passion. Thank you both very much. Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Garden expert Nan Sterman begins her third season this week of the KPBS television series, "A Growing Passion."

The first episode airs at 8 p.m. Thursday, and examines the variety of plants, flowers and trees in the gardens of Balboa Park. It also looks at how those gardens were created in what had been dry and dusty chaparral.

Advertisement

“When we first started on this episode, I thought I knew what it would be,” Sterman told KPBS Midday Edition on Tuesday. “It’s so much grander than what I thought it would be.”

Sterman said much of San Diego’s landscape reflects what’s in Balboa Park.

Other topics for this season include how plants are brought to market and where San Diego gets its water.

"A Growing Passion" airs at 8 p.m. Thursdays and 3:30 p.m. Saturdays on KPBS Television.

'A Growing Passion' Begins Third Season With Focus On Balboa Park