ABSTRACT
Established in 1970, the San Diego Botanic Garden (SDBG) is a 37-acre urban oasis located in Encinitas, California, just north of the City of San Diego. Over the decades since SDBG was established, the garden has worked to conserve threatened plants and habitats, including San Diego’s native flora as well as rare plants from around the world. To address the most pressing challenges – from biodiversity loss to climate change, food insecurity to environmental degradation – our work continues today in ever more ambitious and urgent forms. In 2020, SDBG made conservation a core institutional focus by creating a dedicated Science and Conservation department with a major emphasis on conservation horticulture. In this chapter, we describe the evolution of conservation activities at the SDBG and provide a series of examples of current work on rare and threatened plants of San Diego County.
