News > Newsletters > January 2006

Ben's Garden

During the week, Ben works for a large company as an accountant. But for years, and with the blessing of the city’s park rangers, he has had a second kind of accounting job: slowly converting this plot of land from non-native to native plants. He began the project with a group of volunteers in 1998, and in the early years, eighty percent of everything they planted died. Ben believes this was because native plants need a special fungus in the soil and it took a few years to reestablish this fungus. Now the plants have grown so abundant and unruly, they keep trying to overrun the garden’s trails.

As he pruned them back one morning, Ben said, “I get a certain sense of accounting here. Some of your investments just fail completely and some will make it, and at the end of the day you’ve got this giant portfolio.” He snapped at his investments with his loppers and added: “It’s a very tangible portfolio.”

Joe Matista heard about Ben back in 1998 and gave him a call to ask for advice on the plants in his yard, which was on the edge of the city’s Rose Canyon Park at the west end of Governor Drive. Ben came out, looked around at Joe’s yard and the adjacent park and said, “You know, Joe, you could clean this place up and plant some native plants.”

Ben organized volunteers to do some chain-sawing and over the years rounded up work parties from the Mormon Church, the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts. They built a 500’ long trail through the city park, which Ben calls “the Matista Trail”, with signs identifying the native plants.

Joe started growing his own native plants, and soon was supplying Ben.

Ben’s tenacity, persistence and willingness to help amazed Joe. “Ben moved me further along than I would ever have gone by myself,” he says. “I would probably have grown a few plants and taken out the pampas grass in my yard.” A part of Joe’s motivation still comes from Ben: “I want it to look nice for him. I know there’s one person in the world who will appreciate it, and that’s Ben.”

Former District One City Councilmember Harry Mathis recalls meeting Ben in the mid 1990s: “We had started to organize the Rose Canyon Recreation Council, and a small group of us were down in the Canyon looking it over one day when Ben happened by. He stopped to talk to us, and was eager to help us with preserving and protecting the ambiance of the Canyon. Ben is not one to be a bystander. He was soon actively working to help with projects in the Canyon. Before long, I looked to him to assume a leadership role on the Recreation Council. He has been at it ever since. Ben is an exceptional individual, who is devoted to the betterment of Rose Canyon. He is a selfless, hardworking, natural leader who inspires others by his example."

As a high school student, Jon O’Connor joined a group of students who helped Ben organize fundraising events and volunteer days in the canyon. At the time, Jon wanted to be a forest ranger and loved learning from Ben about native plants and how to eradicate the non-native ones. Jon remembers: “He was passionate, and that rubbed off on me.” Jon now teaches leadership skills through adventure classes and uses techniques he first learned from Ben: “Ben led us by example. . . . He helped me grow by helping me lead instead of telling me what to do.”

Current District One Councilmember Scott Peters says of Ben. "It's great to have residents like Ben who volunteer and work to improve the quality of life here in San Diego."

A few years after starting his garden, Ben moved from University City to Mission Hills and doesn’t get out to the garden as much as he used to. Still, he continues to have new ideas, and is working now in the streamside area next to the garden. One morning he and a friend were chain-sawing non-native trees that had crowded out the native sycamore, live oak and willow trees. Ben pointed out a willow that seemed to him to have perked up in just the past hour with the new influx of sun.

In the past, Ben volunteered on projects around San Diego County, and still helps out friends on their native plant restoration projects. But, like his plants, he has taken root in Rose Canyon.

If you’d like to volunteer to help Ben, email him at rcagrifolia@yahoo.com.