Katherine Olivia Sessions

Katherine Olivia Sessions (November 8, 1857 – March 24, 1940) was an American botanist, horticulturalist, and landscape architect closely associated with San Diego, California. She is known as the "Mother of Balboa Park".

Early life and education Sessions was born in San Francisco, California, and educated in Oakland.

While attending a San Francisco business school, at the request of a friend, she moved to San Diego in 1883 to work as an eighth-grade teacher and vice principal at Russ School. She worked at the school for over a year before leaving due to health problems. The Mission Hills Nursery, which she founded in 1910 and sold to her employees the Antonicelli brothers in 1926, is still in operation.

In 1892, Sessions leased of land in Balboa Park (then called City Park) from the City of San Diego to use as growing fields.

She would also later take a seven-month trip through Europe where she collected multiple plant varieties that she eventually helped plant in the park. Sessions also wrote articles on gardening for local newspapers and helped organize San Diego first Arbor Day celebration in 1904.

Sessions collaborated with architect Hazel Wood Waterman on the garden design of three courtyard homes built by San Diego civic leader Alice Lee on Seventh Ave. near Balboa Park.

Personal life Sessions never married, but maintained a close and lifelong friendship with Alice Eastwood and some people speculate that she may have been a member of the LGBTQ+ community.

Sessions's family followed her from the Bay Area to San Diego. She took on relatives as partners in business. Her father, Josiah, was a helper to her until his death in 1903 after her mother, Harriett, died in 1895. Frank, her only sibling, helped to start the first poinsettia nursery in Mission Hills.

Despite 60 years of 12- and 14-hour work days, she gave herself only two vacations, and both included some horticultural work.

Sessions died in San Diego on March 24, 1940, after contracting pneumonia, at the age of 82. At her funeral, her pallbearers included Senator Ed Fletcher. She is interred next to her brother and parents in Mount Hope Cemetery in San Diego. One of her favorite trees, a twisted juniper, grows alongside her gravesite.

Upon Sessions's death, the city of San Diego passed a resolution in her honor, stating: "San Diego has recently suffered the loss of a most worthy citizen in the passing of Kate Sessions who contributed most in establishing the horticultural beauty of our city. One who gave graciously of her time and professional knowledge so that, today, San Diego is known as the 'beauty spot' of California..."

Sessions had no heirs except Milton, the son of her brother Frank.

Legacy quote="Botanically speaking, I would call Miss Sessions a perennial, evergreen and everblooming." — —George Marston, at a 1935 garden dedication in her honor In 1939, she became the first woman to receive the prestigious Frank N. Meyer medal of the American Genetic Association.

In the San Diego area, the Kate Sessions Elementary school in Pacific Beach bears her name, as does Kate Sessions Memorial Park on Mount Soledad, located less than a mile from the school and constructed only a few years later.

In 2006, the Women's Museum of California inducted Sessions into the San Diego County Women's Hall of Fame, under the title of Trailblazer.

In popular culture A 2013 children's picture book, The Tree Lady: The True Story of How One Tree-Loving Woman Changed a City Forever, tells the story of Sessions's life, education, and contribution to San Diego civic life.

Selected works