Kate O Sessions Cactus Garden — Attraction in San Diego

We're from Tucson (former San Diegians) and wanted to see how much of what we have in our own yard would do in the San Diego climate. It' s actually much dryer in San Diego though the ocean increases the humidity and makes the temperatures a lot less extreme.

Some of the cactus we saw indeed dated back to 1935 era, but generally speaking the entire garden was stressed and cacti were lacking sufficient water to thrive. There is no irrigation assistance and because San Diego has a rainy season but lacks rainfall for most of the year this is problematic. Tucson gets about the same amount of rain, a bit more actually on average, but there is a long summer monsoon season so the the water is more evenly delivered over the year. It's much hotter and dryer there but because cacti store water when it rains this seems to work much better.

I wish the gardners would give everything a good soaking every 60 days from June to December.

PS, Balboa Park is an awesome...

I thought it was pretty cool. There's a large variety of different cacti with some succulents mixed in. Side note: All cacti are succulents but not all succulents are cacti.

The garden is hidden behind the Balboa Park Club which is a very grand, beige, clay pueblo-like structure. We walked through a truck docking area to get to the cactus park. There's probably a prettier way to get there. The cactus garden was really quite far from everything else we wanted to see but I wanted to check it out.

This is a nice place to stop by if you're into plants, or nature in general. Would be a cool place for a desert-themed photo shoot! Keep your eyes open for the cats that live in the park! Someone has built them houses and we saw people feeding them. It was a cute little surprise. Glad someone's taking...

It should be called the cactus and cat garden! We were happily surprised that there were several adorable wild cats roaming the cactus grounds here, one of them was super friendly and let us pet him. Apparently they are locals here and have names. Came for the cacti and stayed for the cats. This garden is a quick 10 min walk from the parking lot or the air and space museum. The hiking trails were in pretty bad shape when we went with overgrown weeds. We stayed near the entrance where the trails were paved. This is a free activity located in Balboa Park! Definitely worth the quick detour to see the unique cactus plants and the...