Stream now with KPBS+ / Watch Monday, Dec. 8, 2025 at 8:30 p.m. on KPBS 2
In "Balboa Park: The Garden Fair," we explore the history of the gardens in San Diego's iconic Balboa Park, as 2015 marked the centennial of the Park's 1915 Panama California Exposition.
By 1909, the 1200 acres set aside by the city 50 years earlier remained little more than dry, dusty chaparral.
By 1915, it was a fantasyland of lush, exotic gardens surrounding buildings designed in elaborate Spanish Colonial architecture.
How did that magical transformation come to be? We walk the park, and talk to the historians to learn about "The Garden Fair."
We hear how the Exposition promoted the city, the first port of call as ships sailed west through the Panama Canal, and how it also promoted the regions' fledgling agriculture and horticulture industries.
We imagine ourselves among the two million Exposition visitors who discovered a climate and landscape unlike anything seen before, and beloved by millions of San Diegans ever since.
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About The Series: A GROWING PASSION is an Emmy-winning lifestyle program that explores San Diego County's agriculture and horticulture activities as an expression of this growing earth-friendly movement. From backyard food production to major horticultural growers, from low-water landscapes to sustainable practices around the home and in the garden, we tell stories about the natural and manmade landscapes that shape the social, cultural, environmental and economic interests of our community. We celebrate how San Diego grows.
