Thanks! It looks like other pictures of T. ledebourii, so you must be right.

Thanks for the nice comments, Violet and Rich, it was a fun random trip. I just picked it at random: some place I've never been, not cold, and 2 hours or less away by air. It really was fun, and I did have serious climate envy. The botanical garden has the second highest spot in Texas, a whopping 46 stair steps up, LOL, so no mountains anywhere near, hah! Here's the view from it. Thanks again and happy gardening all! I hope other road-trippers post botanical updates of where they visit too. All the best!

Just to remind people that the (almost certainly) irreversible change to charging a fee would get the Arboretum only between 7 and 8% of their budget. It will of course cost something to administer the fee, so perhaps 5% is a more realistic number? Regardless, the presence or absence of the fee is not going to make an enormous difference in the overall health of the park. And I would argue that they could get more than 7 or 8% if they were just a bit more creative. Eric, you say "People are not donating like they used to. Memberships are way down from a few years ago". I believe you have identified the problem, at least in part. The Arboretum is bad at fundraising. This needs to be fixed. I don't know the people involved, but it's clear they are not reaching out to us "plant people" as well as they should. I also strongly suspect they are failing to tap the immense wealth in San Francisco and its suburbs, which I would expect would be their true source of money. Reaching out to "plant people": I suppose there are many ways one could describe Strybing's incredibly low profile. As I mentioned above, many of the big names in the horticultural world are totally unaware of their sales. But this is perhaps even more telling: I've only been to the Conservatory of Flowers (the glasshouse, also in Golden Gate Park) and the UC Botanical Garden a couple times each in the last couple years. However, I just checked: emails from UC Botanical Garden in the last year: 38. From the Conservatory of flowers: 18. From Strybing: 0. (note that I have received a number of personal emails from employees and volunteers at Strybing in response to questions.) Strybing fails to promote itself and I assume to raise money. That needs to be fixed before they make an irreversible step like charging money. Yes, those of us who post on a forum like this will continue to go to Strybing. Those aren't the people we should be concerned with. People like my mom, as I mentioned, will be less likely to go. Strybing is unlikely to ever raise that much money by selling more plants, by the way. $200,000 would be 20,000 $10 plants, even assuming 100% profit, which divided by 10 or 12 sales is close to 2,000 plants per sale...impossible. However they could clearly raise more money by raising their profile a little bit and appealing to all of the wealth in the area. If they start holding events for the rich and they make this place of beauty a center for those people, a good fundraising effort should be able to raise 10% more money. However, if they do run out of money and can't take care of all their plants, I suspect they can save quite a bit of money by neglecting their most abundant one--the grass--which is all over. Let the grass die and go uncut, yet preserve the important plants. The park will become an "eyesore" in the opinion of many, yet they will preserve what counts. I bet the dead overgrown grass would draw attention and that extra 7 or 8% of the budget would quickly appear. There are many creative ways the Arboretum could raise money. The newspaper article said that $10,000 was spent to pay a lobbyist to push for the $7 fee. If they had instead spent the money on a consultant to look at ways to raise the profile of the Arboretum, appeal to the wealth of the area, and raise money, I suspect the need for the fee would vanish.

Barbra, yes it was a lovely place and I have many happy memories of the customers and employees from when I worked there. Maybe I waited on you? When Bob and I first married we lived just a couple of short blocks away and I could walk or ride my bicycle to work. I never made any money though as I spent it all on plants which Mrs. Vernon let the employees buy at a significant discount. It was a busy place and Mrs. Vernon was constantly answering the phone and making change. They didn't have a cash register, just a cigar box. Once when the phone rang Mrs. Vernon opened the lid of the cigar box and said "Hello". We laughed and laughed! I drove over there a few years ago and it was no more.