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Description
Mill Valley resident Steven Pitsenbarger is the garden supervisor of San Francisco's Japanese Tea Garden and serves on the board of the North American Japanese Garden Association. In this oral history, Steven shares his unconventional path to becoming a gardener, his day-to-day duties and goals for the Japanese Tea Garden, and a history of Mill Valley's own Japanese gardens. Born and raised in Visitacion Valley, San Francisco with a single mother and five siblings, Steven has fond memories of the city's free entertainment offerings, and he describes taking the bus for family daytrips to Aquatic Park, Fisherman's Wharf, and Golden Gate Park. As an adult, after studying Music at Humboldt State University, Steven worked office jobs to support his musicianship, but eventually quit to spend more time outside. He spent 10 years running a successful house painting business before a lack of creative fulfillment led him to pursue a degree in Ornamental Horticulture from City College of San Francisco. Steven's voracious appetite for plant identification and meticulous attention to detail landed him an internship at the Conservatory of Flowers, and then a job at the Japanese Tea Garden in 2007. As the garden's supervisor, Steven tends to plants, people, and history. His oral history celebrates the garden as a conduit between people and nature, offering insights into the rhythm and span of time represented by plants and stone, and a vision for how the garden will survive the future of climate change. Steven ends the oral history with a performance of his song Tiny Yellow, written in praise of a flower he encountered while hiking the Trinity Alps.
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