From the SF Botanical Garden:

New Plant Nursery Construction Underway

Modern Facility in Golden Gate Park to Conserve Endangered Plantsand Protect Global Biodiversity

San Francisco Botanical Garden is preparing to step into a new role safeguarding the world’s plants from extinction with a new modern nursery, replacing a 50-year-old facility.

“The new nursery will provide us the tools to address one of the planet’s most urgent crises – shrinking biodiversity. We’ve achieved this milestone thanks to our partners at San Francisco Recreation & Parks and 275 donors who’ve contributed to this effort,” said Stephanie Linder, Executive Director, San Francisco Botanical Garden Society.

This project’s success was significantly impacted by the generosity of Board Chair Delle Maxwell and her husband, Patrick Hanrahan. Their $3 million commitment included a $2 million challenge match to achieve the fundraising goal.

“As a longtime nursery volunteer, I am delighted to mark the groundbreaking of the new nursery for San Francisco Botanical Garden. This facility is essential to our efforts to propagate, conserve, display and share rare and endangered plants,” said Botanical Garden Board Chair and lead donor, Delle Maxwell. 

The new $8 million nursery will allow the Botanical Garden to nurture and exchange rare plants from around the globe with other botanical gardens, governments, and nonprofits with the goal of preserving these species and saving them from extinction.

The Garden worked with award-winning design firm Siegel & Strain to develop the new nursery and maintenance facility concept design. Scheduled for completion in Spring 2022, the new facility will be approximately 40,000 square feet including outdoor growing space, a climate-controlled greenhouse, and sanitary areas for plant propagation.

“We must ensure future generations can enjoy, be inspired by, and learn about the rare and endangered plants in the Botanical Garden, and this new facility is an important step in that direction” says Phil Ginsburg, General Manager, San Francisco Recreation and Park Department. 

A functional nursery is critical to maintaining and growing a thriving living plant collection. Worldwide, botanical gardens play a crucial role in protecting the world’s plant biodiversity in the face of the extinction crisis. As habitats are destroyed, botanical gardens are working to conserve and protect species that may otherwise be lost forever by cultivating, documenting, and sharing rare and iconic species.

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About San Francisco Botanical Garden

San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum is a living museum within Golden Gate Park, offering 55 acres of beautiful gardens displaying nearly 8,000 different kinds of plants from around the world. The Garden features nationally accredited collections of high elevation palms, Mesoamerican cloud forest plants, and Magnolias. San Francisco’s mild climate allows the Garden to grow plants from six continents, making San Francisco Botanical Garden unique in the United States. The collections also include many other species that are rare or endangered in the wild.

The Garden is open 365 days of the year and is free for city residents and members. Easily accessed by public transport, the Garden welcomes more than 400,000 people annually – 60% of whom experience the Garden free of charge. The Garden also offers dozens of free programs for our communities. Most notable of these are the youth education programs, which engage 13,000 children every year, and Flower Piano, which attracts more than 50,000 visitors annually.

Established in 1940, originally as Strybing Arboretum, San Francisco Botanical Garden is a public/private partnership between San Francisco Botanical Garden Society and the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department. 

About the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department

The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department currently manages more than 220 parks, playgrounds and open spaces throughout San Francisco, including two outside city limits—Sharp Park in Pacifica and Camp Mather in the High Sierras. The system includes full-complex recreation centers, swimming pools, golf courses, sports fields and numerous small-to-medium-sized clubhouses that offer a variety of sports- and arts-related recreation programs for people of all ages.  Included in the Department’s responsibilities are Golden Gate Park, Coit Tower, the Marina Yacht Harbor, the San Francisco Zoo and Lake Merced.

In 2017, San Francisco became the first and only city in the nation where all residents have access to a park within a 10-minute walk, a direct result of the Department’s commitment to increasing and improving parkland in the city.