By Eric Duvall / Pt Loma-OB Monthly / April 16, 2024
“See that big old tree,” Scotty Hunter would say as he regaled his cronies. “Teddy Roosevelt planted that tree.”
Quite a claim, you’ll agree. The fact that the great Afrocarpus gracilior, or African fern pine, stood in a shady section of Point Loma’s Wooded Area made that pronouncement even more remarkable.
Tall tale? The big tree certainly was tall. True story? Not really, no. But at least one of those former cronies is willing to cut the grandson of midcentury nursery proprietors Don and Kathryn Hunter some slack on that exuberant claim. Sure, it’s a great story, and probably the way he had heard it most of his life, but for the enchanted aisles of Rosecroft Gardens, hyperbole was never necessary.
Current evidence that a world-renowned exotic and tropical nursery once thrived in the wilds of a very quiet and out-of-the-way neighborhood is scarce. Street signs for Rosecroft and Garden lanes might help you triangulate the grounds where acres of begonias, bromeliads, azaleas, fuchsias and ferns once bloomed spectacularly in the dappled sunshine under their lath and later shade cloth canopies.
‘Dean of Begonias’
Rosecroft Gardens was the work of Alfred D. Robinson, known among other appellations as the “Dean of Begonias.” Robinson was no botanist. Instead, he was a fully fledged horticultural savant. At one time his collection at Rosecroft included over 200 varieties of fuchsias and more than 500 varieties of begonias. At least 100 of those Robinson is credited with originating.
Writing in California Garden magazine, John Blocker recalled that “Robinson’s lath house harbored tiny begonias with leaves as delicate as fern fronds and giant rex begonias with leaves 2 feet wide. Some were low growers, some medium-sized and some grew into shrubs almost the size of a small tree. He had begonias climbing up posts and others trailing from hanging baskets. Robinson believed that begonias varied more in shape and size than any other flowering plant.”
Encyclopedia of Horticulture author and Cornell University professor Liberty Hyde Bailey once proclaimed that Robinson knew more about the tuberous begonia than anyone else in the Western Hemisphere.
Robinson was born in 1866 in Watton in the Breckland district of Norfolk, U.K. Like many of the other blokes in his burg, he was much taken by the tales of the Wild West and dreamed of becoming a cowboy.
Robinson immigrated to the United States in 1894. He soon abandoned his range-riding aspirations and relocated first to Orange County and then to San Francisco, where he married Marion Duncan, the daughter of a wealthy Scottish copper mining family. The couple lived with Marion’s widower father, Hillarion Duncan, on Turk Street in San Francisco until the old man’s passing in 1901.
Rosecroft
Having heard Katherine Tingley speak in San Francisco, the Robinsons elected to join other spiritually minded folk in the orbit of the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society at its new world headquarters, Lomaland in Point Loma.
Though they fell out later, the couple were great benefactors of Tingley in Lomaland’s early years. In 1903, the Theosophical Society sold the Robinsons a 10-acre barley field on the east side of what is now known as Catalina Boulevard.
Alfred D. Robinson, in the light-colored suit in the foreground, stands with members of the San Diego Floral Association at Rosecroft Gardens in 1912.
(San Diego Historical Society)
A 15,000-square-foot Italian Renaissance-style villa designed for the Robinsons by Emmor Brooke Weaver was built on Silvergate Avenue in 1912. The grounds were soon planted with orchards and with formal gardens including many roses, of which Marion was particularly fond.
The Robinsons named the estate Rosecroft. The house remains very beautiful today and is on the National Register of Historic Places. But the informal “jungle-like wonderland” of the gardens to the south and west put Rosecroft squarely on the map.
‘Palace of Lath’
In 1907, Robinson teamed with kindred spirit Kate Sessions — known and loved by San Diegans as the “Mother of Balboa Park” — to form the San Diego Floral Association. Robinson became its first president.
The group’s main goal was to bring color and greenery to the dusty San Diego landscape of a century ago. For decades the association held annual meetings on the grounds of Rosecroft Gardens.
The group grew quickly and in 1909 began California Garden, now the nation’s oldest horticulture magazine in continuous publication. Much of the information in this story comes from the pages of California Garden. If you guessed that the founding editor of California Garden was Alfred D. Robinson, you are, of course, correct.
Sessions brought U.S. Department of Agriculture official, accomplished botanist and international plant hunter David Fairchild to Rosecroft Gardens in 1919. While Fairchild was nonplussed by much of the Southern California landscape, he called Robinson’s hanging baskets of begonias “the loveliest things I ever saw” and commended his collection as “the finest begonias to be grown anywhere in the world.”
Additionally, Sessions may actually have brought the seed of the great African fern pine to Rosecroft. Thanks to the great research of California Garden Associate Editor Nancy Carol Carter for those wonderful nuggets.
Carter says “Robinson had the time, patience and scientific aptitude to perfect the growing of superlative begonias. He found that a lath house filled with greenery made an ideal home for these plants. On the grounds of his estate, he built a huge lath house covering thousands of square feet. It was an outdoor entertainment and living space, as well as his botanical laboratory. As a sideline, his many published writings promoting the use of lath houses earned him the title ‘Father of the Lath House.’”
Writing in Sunset magazine in 1912, Robinson imagined what he termed a “Palace of Lath” as part of an extensive horticultural exhibit that he championed for inclusion in the fast-approaching Panama-California Exposition in San Diego. In California Garden, Robinson described what he called a dream:
“I had entered the garden of Eden. Palms and ferns and flowering plants and vines on all sides, sending out their delicate scents upon the night air to mingle with the odor of the moist earth and recent rain, a draught as intoxicating as champagne. … We were in the largest lath house ever projected as a pleasure resort. Where the band played and we sat was a great central dome 500 feet in diameter, arched over by a domed roof rising 50 feet in the air. Up its supporting columns ran choice vines, jasmines of such sweet savor, begonias and tecomas of gaudy hue and the curious Dutchman’s pipe.
Palms from many lands and of many forms lined the borders and were in beds here and there while begonias and other foliage plants nestled at their feet. In the air hung orchids with their strangely beautiful blossoms.”
What we know as Balboa Park’s Botanical Building is the result of Robinson’s activism. Currently in its fourth extensive restoration, the Botanical Building, with its beautiful reflecting pond, remains a favorite with park visitors and is one of the most unique and iconic structures in San Diego.
Though the gentleman may not have completely approved of the finished product, a plaque honoring Robinson as its inspiration can be found in the big lath house, still considered the largest such structure in the world.
Marion Robinson passed away in 1919, leaving Alfred as a widower with a 10-year-old daughter, Charlotte. Several years later, Alfred married Charlotte’s governess, Annie Louisa Colby. The couple had five children at Rosecroft, where Alfred lived happily until he passed in 1942.
Alfred and Annie Robinson certainly sold begonias, but their gardens were not a conventional commercial operation. Their customers were collectors, begonia enthusiasts and other botanical gardens.
The post-Robinson era
Following Alfred Robinson’s death, the estate sold off the west side of the property. More than two acres were retained as the grounds of the Rosecroft mansion. A portion of the block was subdivided and Garden Lane was put in.
The southeast corner of the block, which included most of the lath houses and exotic flora, remained a very unique commercial nursery. Donald and Kathryn Hunter ran Rosecroft Gardens for three decades.
The gardens were often a venue for showers, weddings and meetings of garden and service clubs. Kathryn Hunter, an expert horticulturist, was in demand as a speaker about gardening topics and was well-known for her ability to imitate many bird calls. I’m sorry I missed that.
A wooden tower was erected that afforded a view of San Diego Bay from the second level and housed her collection of bottles and similar curios.
My former classmate Carol Breining grew up just a couple of blocks from Rosecroft Gardens. “It was a place of such peace and beauty and joy. At least for me,” she recalled.
“There was one summer, either just before or just after the fourth grade, that the lovely Mrs. Hunter allowed me to ‘work’ there. I think she saw how enamored of the place I was and was just trying to do a young girl a huge favor. As I recall, she paid me 50 cents a week to come every day and clean up the fallen begonia blooms. Often they were still pretty fresh, and I was allowed to bring them home with me. My father made a special box for me to transport the blooms home on my bicycle. It had several layers that held three or four blooms each.”
Carol said she shared most of the blooms with her mother but regularly took her bounty to other ladies on her block.
“Tuberous begonias are still probably my favorite flower,” Carol added. “They looked so lovely floating in water. … I have a vague recollection of lots of treasures in that tower — almost like a museum to my young eyes and mind. I remember Mrs. Hunter as being a very kind, gracious and patient woman.”
Ocean Beach Historical Society archivist and former city librarian Heather Reed told me that “Rosecroft Gardens made a big impression on a couple of Collier Junior High girls. That place influenced my life. I loved all the plants, of course, but she [Mrs. Hunter] had windows where she displayed blue glass bottles and some blue and white pattern dishes. I just loved that blue glass, and guess what color my dishes are?”
Photographer Pernel Thyseldew remembers excitedly telling Mrs. Hunter about the good luck he was having with his own begonias.
“Young man,” she replied, “there is no such thing as luck when it comes to growing tuberous begonias. You understand their needs and provide for them or … you don’t!”
Pernel later worked for the Hunters’ son Jerry, another well-known San Diego nurseryman. “Jerry introduced one begonia,” Pernel told me. “Flamingo, DichroaXUndulata, in 1950, which I still grow!”
Rosecroft Gardens closed in the mid-1970s. Most of what remains are memories, but what lovely memories.
Gardener and artist Alice Clark was elected the first president of a local branch of the American Begonia Society, named for Alfred D. Robinson.
Meeting at Rosecroft in 1943, Clark encouraged the membership to “enjoy this day here. See Rosecroft with your hearts as well as your minds and eyes. It may not always exist for us in reality as it does today, but the qualities that make it what it is — the vision and the patience to work out our dreams — are our heritage.”
Eric DuVall is president of the Ocean Beach Historical Society. Many thanks to Nancy Carol Carter, Kitty McDaniel, J.B. Hall, Carol Breining, Heather Reed and Pernel Thyseldew for their help with this story. The San Diego Floral Association may be found at sdfloral.org/index.html. Membership in OBHS, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is $25 annually. Visit obhistory.org.
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