The San Francisco Botanical Garden needs your help

If you've been around the Botanical Garden at all the past few weeks, you will doubtless have seen the flyers, signs, protestors, petitions and general hullabaloo about the proposed $5 admission charge. If you're one of the apparently many people who signed that petition, you can pat yourself on the back because it sounds like the proposal has been defeated.

I know, you love the garden, but the garden needs your help.

Now, I've heard all manner of sass on both sides of the debate. Protestors claiming we're charging just to be spiteful and that the admission fee will make us all worse off since we'll have to fork it over to cover the cost of hiring people to man the gates and build whatever infrastructure is needed to take your money. On the other side, someone apparently suggested that if we can't afford all the plants in the garden we should just level the whole thing, fill it with grass and keep it fenced off because it's the one place in Golden Gate park you can take your toddlers to play without fear of bringing home dog bitten children who'll track poop onto your carpet. So, let me give you the inside scoop.

First of all, it's obvious from the $20 admission that other gardens charge that running a Botanical Garden costs money, and that money has to come from somewhere. No one's crazy about the idea of tacking an admission charge onto the 'last free thing in San Francisco,' but without money there is no Botanical Garden.

The garden you all love doesn't have enough gardeners as is, and the irrigation system we have now still requires us to do a huge amount of hand-watering, not to mention all the weeding, mulching, and heavy lifting required to keep our plants happy and beautiful. For you.

Insiders at the garden tell me that even the most conservative, worst case scenario estimates of the $5 admission charge would have given us an extra $100K annually. It would have meant a lot to us, but it was defeated. So, now we're asking for $7 from out of county visitors. You're right, charging admission will change the character of the park. It's a bummer, but the alternative of not having a garden at all is, I think, less palatable to us all, and having people at the gates will help us prevent a lot of the theft of rare plants we've seen in the past.

I don't believe that the folks opposing the admission charge honestly want to raze the garden to create a grassy dog-free play pen. I've spoken with them. We all want to keep the garden as the beautiful and welcoming part of the community that it is, but the city of San Francisco simply can't afford to keep it up with city tax dollars alone. So, let us out of towners pitch in.

As an out of county resident of the Bay Area, I'm asking you to please let me give my $7 to keep the garden alive. We all love the garden, let's not love it to death.



Here are a few things you can do to help:
*Come to the second public hearing and workshop on May 28 at 6:30 p.m. in the County Fair Building auditorium (that big building at the main entrance of the garden).
*Write or email Jared Blumenfeld, the Interim General Manager of the Recreation and Park Department, and tell him you support the non-resident admission fee to the Garden. Reiterate your understanding that it costs money to keep the Garden beautiful, safe, and watered. Email: GM.RPD@sfgov.org or Snail Mail: McLaren Lodge, 501 Stanyan Street, San Francisco, CA 94117
*Email your local San Francisco Supervisor to let them know you support the non-resident admission fee:
Eric Mar, District 1
Michela Alioto-Pier, District 2
David Chiu, District 3
Carmen Chu, District 4
Ross Mirkarimi, District 5
Chris Daly, District 6
Sean Elsbernd, District 7
Bevan Dufty, District 8
David Campos, District 9
Sophie Maxwell, District 10
John Avalos, District 11
Or, if politics isn't your thing,
*Become a member of the SF Botanical Garden.