S.F. Botanical Garden: Spring in full bloom
Botanical garden draws hundreds of flower lovers
Flowers, which seem to know more than people about things that matter, are getting into the spirit of this thing called spring.
On Saturday at the San Francisco Botanical Garden, they were doing what they do best, in Technicolor, and hundreds of flower lovers were on hand. When it comes to flowers, there are only lovers. Some of them may have allergies, but it’s nothing personal.
“I do love this place,” said Tessa Groener of Lafayette, who had journeyed long and far, by the conveyances known as BART and the N-Judah, to stroll amidst tens of thousands of her best flowering friends. “The quiet. The peace. You can just stop whatever you’re doing and listen to the silence.’’
“I don’t know if the flowers know that today is April 1, but they know it’s time to do what they do now. They’re so simple, and we people are so complex. They know when it’s time to live and time to die. We could learn from them.”
All that for only $6 admission, she said. It would have been $2 more, but she’s a senior.
The botanical garden, on the Lincoln Way side of Golden Gate Park, seems far from anyplace, not just from Lafayette. It’s full of long pathways leading past plants with long Latin names. The names are on little signs, alongside other little signs that say you mustn’t pick them and you mustn’t step on them and you mustn’t step on the caterpillars, either.
The best things to look at right now, said garden supervisor Karla Schiemann, are the Ch iran thom onto den dr on lenzii and the Puya alpestris and some other plants harder to spell. Some plants are slightly confused about what, exactly, they’re supposed to be doing, she said. The magnolias, for instance.
“They started blooming in October,” Schiemann said. “It should have been December. Then the rains came. They started up again and they’re going through March until now. Is it climate change? Call it what you want to.’’
The botanical garden is nothing if not magical. Right now, the rhododendrons and the succulents are going great guns. The daffodils have a short time to stay, the poet said, but they should linger through the week. After that, they dry away as the “pearls of morning’s dew, ne’er to be found again.”
Ten steps from South Africa is New Zealand and a few more steps brings you to Chile. Try doing that trip outside the garden gate and you are out a lot more than $8.
On the edge of Waterfowl Pond, Maxwell Kessler was paying his first visit to the botanical garden. The thing he seemed to like best about the garden was grabbing handfuls of dirt and throwing it on himself, but that might have been because Maxwell is 17 months old.
“He’s also excited about the ducks,” said his mother, Ayesha, while at that moment his father, Brian, was busy trying to prevent a bold botanical garden squirrel from making off with the family’s picnic lunch.
The Kesslers lounged beneath a cherry blossom tree in full bloom. The cherry blossoms are also blooming right now along the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., that traditional mecca for cherry blossom fans, but there are many reasons to avoid Washington, D.C., these days that have more to do with the throwing of dirt than with cherry blossoms.
“Maxwell’s enjoying himself. We’re trying to instill in him a love of being outside. I’d say mission accomplished,” said Mom.
Every so often, a tour group would pass by and it was possible to overhear a valuable piece of information (“this plant was once thought to be extinct,” the guide said, pointing
at an otherwise undistinguished green clump) before the group meandered on beyond earshot.
Down another path was a greenhouse where expert orchid grower Dave Granucci was actually succeeding in making orchids grow, as opposed to what lesser orchid growers usually wind up doing to orchids.
Granucci admitted that orchids can be plenty fussy. Many would prefer to be in Hawaii, he said, an understandable sentiment. But other orchids thrive at the botanical garden, a place good for both orchids and people.
“It’s a great escape from the city,” Granucci said. “Quiet, peaceful. Trees, birds. Tranquillity. You can push a baby stroller and you don’t have to worry about getting hit by a bread truck.”
By the main gate, other volunteers were holding a big plant sale. Blue plants were $4 and yellow ones were $5 and a pink one was $15.
Also for sale were seeds. A whole pack of redwood seeds, enough to produce an entire Muir Woods in your backyard, was only $2.95. The fine print on the back said the trees could last for 2,000 years, a big commitment that seemed to be discouraging prospective buyers.
“Not every redwood seed turns into a redwood tree,” said a man selling the seeds. “Fortunately.”