Susie’s Book Nook - New Children’s Book Review: ‘The Tree Lady’

Many people are planting trees, but no one planted more trees or did more to make a “desert” thrive with beautiful trees than Kate Sessions. Read her wonderful story in “The Tree Lady” by H. Joseph Hopkins and illustrated by Jill McElmurry.

I just happened upon this book browsing my local library one day and what a treat. Having visited San Diego many times, I was immediately connected to this book and how this amazing woman changed the ecological footprint of San Diego and Balboa Park, in particular, to its luscious green environment of today. It’s also amazing what one person can do to make a significant change in our society, lives, and environment.

This book takes the reader on a journey through Katherine’s life from her earliest beginning in the 1860s as a little girl who loved the woods in Northern California where she grew up. A trailblazer for women as she ran a course different from the expected course in her day and age. When most girls were discouraged from “getting their hands dirty” and studying science, Kate followed her passion. No woman had ever graduated from the University of California with a degree in science, but Kate did in 1881.

Kate’s first job was as a teacher in San Diego which she viewed as a desert town. How would she ever survive in a place with very few trees. It was interesting to me that Balboa Park, which Kate could view from her classroom window, was originally a place where people grazed cattle and dumped garbage. If you have ever been to Balboa Park recently you know what a beautiful park it is full of flourishing plants with beautiful gardens and trees. All this was made possible by the work of Katherine Olivia Sessions.

Leaving teaching, Kate becomes a gardener with a goal to plant trees that could live in a dry soil with lots and lots of sunshine. She became a tree hunter. She writes letters to gardeners all over the world asking them to send her seeds that could grow in a desert. Kate also traveled into Mexico searching for trees that liked hot, dry weather and steep hills and canyons.

Kate’s story is fascinating and inspiring as you read how she changes her desert city into a lush garden with all kinds of trees such as Yucca and Eucalyptus, Jacaranda and Bristlecone Pine, Brazilian Pepper and Palm Trees. However, changing Balboa Park into an amazing and shady park for the Panama-California Exposition in 1915 was by far Kate’s biggest challenge.

You must read “The Tree Lady” to find out just how she was able to plant thousands of trees before the exposition began. This fair which was to last for one year delighted so many it was held open for two years. And Kate? Well, people took to calling her the Mother of Balboa Park.

This is a wonderful true story with the power to inspire us all to do more for our own environments in our own special ways.