De Laveaga Magnolias - San Francisco, California - Dedicated Trees on Waymarking.com

This is located on a sloping walkway which leads to the Dell and the AIDS Memorial Grove.

The De Laveaga family has a long heritage of philanthropy in northern California. Here they have dedicated a small group of magnolias in honor of the man who originally gave De Laveaga Dell to the city.

The marker is a boulder which is engraved:
"The Magnolias
A gift from the De Laveaga family
in honor of
Jose Vicente de Laveaga
whose generosity created De Laveaga Dell -
and in loving memory of the many lives and
hearts that have been touched by AIDS"


From a Brunner Foundation pdf:

"De Laveaga Dell, given to the park by the de Laveaga family in the1890s and landscaped in 1921, was one of the oldest developed parts of Golden Gate Park, but it had been seriously neglected since the early 1980s due to budget cuts. As family members who had been saddened by this neglect recall, the policy seemed to be “If you can’t see it from the car, it doesn’t matter.” "
"The 7.5-acre site offered the kind of topography, size, and location the AIDS Memorial Grove advocates were seeking. The de Laveaga family’s enthusiasm for the proposal was an added bonus. ... A further coincidence was that Connie de Laveaga Stoops, a great-niece of Jose Vicente de Laveaga, who had given the Dell to the City, was then an architecture student who was willing to become involved in the project. An informal agreement to use de Laveaga Dell was reached in 1991."
"September 19, 1991 marked the first workday and is considered the birthday of the Grove. Two hundred people attended that day, inaugurating many months of labor-intensive weed, tree, and bramble removal."
"In 1994 the AIDS Memorial Grove officially leased the de Laveaga Dell from Golden Gate Park for 99 years, promising in return to maintain the site, and ultimately to fund a full-time gardener in perpetuity. "
(visit link)

Location of the tree: Golden Gate Park Type of tree: Magnolia

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