It was the year that Route 66 was created. Calvin Coolidge was the president. Thomas Edison declared radio a commercial failure, and Queen Elizabeth the 2nd was born.
And, the first botanic garden in the country dedicated to native plants opened in Santa Barbara in 1926.
"We look good for our age!" said Steve Windhager, Executive Director of Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. "We want everyone to get involved in the planting of native plants."
They say from tiny acorns, mighty oaks grow, and that’s a saying that’s literal at this botanical garden. From its founding 100 years ago, it has grown from a local destination to a global leader in native plant conservation, said Windhager.
"If you lose the plant, you also lose the insect, and that's what's causing that insect apocalypse that we're hearing so much about. Plants and insects are most of the biomass on the planet. It's over 80% of the life that's out here. And if we lose them, we lose everything else that is above that. So the plants feed the insects, the insects feed the birds, and the birds continue up the food chain," he said of the importance of protecting native plants.
The garden’s latest major conservation effort is dedicated to protecting one of the rarest pine species in the world, the Torrey Pine.
"What you're looking at right now is a future forest, a future grove of one of the rarest pine trees on earth," said the garden’s Director of Horticulture, Keith Nevison.
"This is one of two populations of tori pines that exist in the world. The one that is more well-known is north of San Diego. The only other place in the entire world where they're found is actually in Santa Rosa Island, which we can see, of course, off the coast here in Santa Barbara," said Nevison.
"Like all of these native plants, they have co-evolved with their pollinators, and they support so much wildlife, and we want to hang on and protect these species that are at risk," he added. "These plants are endangered, and we're having this conservation grove. So that we can keep them going, and if anything were to happen to the island population, we would have a genetic backup here at the garden. Pine trees are actually quite quick-growing, and we have some examples over here that were planted when the conservation center was opened in 2016 that are already a good 30 feet tall. And so these are going to leap."
It’s a moment to celebrate this living legacy that protects California’s native plants and habitats and figure out how we can play our own part in protecting it for the next 100 years and beyond.