WOMEN IN HORTICULTURE: Lee Somerville: Two Lives in Horticulture
By Nancy Carol Carter, for California Garden Magazine and shared with Let’s Talk Plants! November 2026.
Lee Somerville: Two Lives in Horticulture
When Wisconsin resident Lee Somerville began spending her winters in San Diego more than fifteen years ago, she soon integrated herself into a welcoming community that shared her interests in gardening, historic sites, and landscape and garden history. Lee was characteristically modest and self-effacing, so it was some time before her San Diego acquaintances learned about her established professional reputation in Wisconsin. Research for this addition to California Garden’s “Woman in Horticulture” series reveals much more about the activities and experience that made her such a valuable addition to the horticultural world of San Diego.
Wisconsin and Before
Born in Liverpool, England, Lee started her working life by training in medical technology. Her expertise with a new piece of medical equipment led to a job offer in Greece which
she adventurously accepted. After a year, the attractions of other job possibilities, college, and romance took her to Canada and then the United States. After a time in California, Lee settled in Wisconsin in 1976 where she married and raised two children. She completed a college degree in music, with the piano as her instrument.
Lee was always a gardener, keeping houseplants alive fordecades and learning how to make things grow in radically different environments. She sharpened that interest, becoming a Wisconsin Master Gardener and undertaking what became a 16-year volunteer association with the Heritage Hill State Historical Park in Green Bay, Wisconsin. She filled multiple roles at this park between 1985 and 2001, including service as the interim director and head gardener. But the influential aspect of these years was the fostering of Lee’s interest in historic landscape sites and their preservation.
According to an article in the Green Bay Press, Lee became aware that park visitors were increasingly asking about the plants and trees growing throughout the Heritage Hill open air museum. She helped to develop plans for enhanced gardens and landscaping around the many buildings of the park, and trained volunteers to maintain them. In this work, she sought information on old-time gardens that would have been typical of historical periods and ethnicities represented at Heritage Hill. The lack of information on these early Wisconsin vernacular gardens spurred her interest in studying landscape history. She enrolled
in a graduate program at the University of Wisconsin as a self-described “mature student.”
Studying Wisconsin Gardens and Landscape
During her graduate work, Lee co-wrote a HALS report in 2007. Founded by the National Park Service, the Historic American Landscape Survey (HALS) encourages the documenting and photographing of historic landscapes in reports that conform with exacting National Park standards. Accepted reports are added to a publicly accessible digital database. Lee and her co-author documented an example of an industrial community planning district at Montreal, Iron County, Wisconsin, writing about its buildings and landscape.
The next year, Elisabeth Lee Somerville’s graduate thesis, “The Ornamentation of Home Grounds: Changes in Recommendations for Wisconsin Vernacular Gardens Between 1870 and 1930,” was accepted, the final step in earning her master’s degree in historic landscape architecture.
Completion of this thesis required the amassing and intellectual absorption of a mountain of written material. Publications of the Wisconsin State Horticultural Society were a key source that parenthetically alerted Lee to the unexpected prominence of women in early horticulture meetings and writings. Lee’s inner feminist was delighted by this discovery and the opportunity it gave her to highlight the contributions of women to early Wisconsin horticulture.
Lee’s thesis—a 200-page typescript—was the starting point for her first book: Vintage Wisconsin Gardens: A History of Home Gardens. This decorative and educational work was published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press in 2011. The book filled a statewide information void, and its lineup of resources and methodology provide guidance for creating or recreating period gardens. Reviews were favorable. A particularly long and explicative one appeared in Urban Milwaukee, an online newspaper (November 1, 2011). Vintage Wisconsin Gardens won national recognition in the Independent Publisher Book Awards. It was one of the top three titles in the Home and Garden category, receiving the bronze award in New York City on June 4, 2012. The book was called “delightful and informative” in a later review in the weighty University of Iowa Annals (2013).
A Successful Author
The publication of Vintage Wisconsin Gardens opened new vistas for Lee. She had the satisfaction of seeing years of work packaged into a beautifully designed, award-winning and
critically admired book. A book with staying power and utility*. She was suddenly in demand, traveling around the state, speaking and signing books at history societies, garden clubs, preservation conferences and other venues. Hundreds of Wisconsin librarians were made aware of the book when Lee spoke and signed books at the 2011 Wisconsin Library Association Conference.
In time, active book promotion slowed and Lee increased her service commitments, joining the board of the Wisconsin Historical Society and leading volunteers from her local Master
Gardeners and the Home and Garden Club in growing produce for local food banks. She taught family gardening classes and annually led the Master Gardeners in creating a display
garden typical of one of the ethnic communities that populated Wisconsin. She was later recognized as “a patient and wisdom-filled mentor for Master Gardeners volunteers.” But Lee’s volunteer commitments changed as her time increasingly was divided between Wisconsin and the West Coast where she had family ties.
In advance of its 20th anniversary, a 47-acre Wisconsin botanical garden asked Lee to write a commemorative history of its founding, evolution, challenges and community impact. After
extensive research and interviews, Lee Somerville produced her second book, A Place for Everyone: The History of the Green Bay Botanical Garden published in 2016.
Lee was recognized as the state’s most knowledgeable heritage garden expert and continued to make invited presentations to Wisconsin meetings and conferences, but this
book was her last major contribution to the horticulture world of Wisconsin; she had made San Diego her year-around residence.
*Lee knew her book would long be useful to people working with historic gardens but could not have expected to find it cited in Pnina Lahav, The Only Woman in the Room: Golda Meir and Her Path to Power. Princeton University Press, 2024 (Chapter 14, note 2). Meir grew up in Milwaukee and Lee’s book was relied upon to document that “planting flowers is an attribute of the American character.”
Home in San Diego
During Lee’s early winters in Southern California, she began seeking out “her people” in the world of horticulture, gardens, historic sites, and garden and landscape history. By the time
she fully relocated to San Diego and settled in the Point Loma neighborhood, she was an established member of the California Garden and Landscape History Society and had published an article in its quarterly journal, Eden (Fall 2011). With the observant eyes of a newcomer, she wrote about Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.
Lee also made early contact with the Marston House Museum and Gardens in Balboa Park, contributing legions of experience in historic home gardens and the development of interpretive garden tours.
She joined the large and active Point Loma Garden Club, becoming a deeply involved and much-respected member. Lee also became a member of the San Diego Horticulture Society,
and, in time, was certified as a California Master Gardener. She wholeheartedly plunged back into the multifaceted activities of the Master Gardener organization. She enjoyed hands-on gardening at Founders Plaza in Balboa Park and at the Point Loma Lighthouse garden, two public gardens “adopted” by the Master Gardeners. The lighthouse garden is an old-fashioned planting of vegetables such as the lighthouse keepers may have grown, an
echo of the historic vernacular gardens Lee designed, cultivated and studied in Wisconsin. She loved this outdoor work and the opportunity to increase her knowledge of local plants but was also part of a Master Gardener delegation that visits Alzheimer’s patients, working with them on simple projects using plants and flowers.
Every California organization that Lee joined and served was enriched by her contributions. This is true in magnitudes at the San Diego Floral Association (SDFA) and its California
Garden magazine. Lee found the Floral Association office and library in Balboa Park early in her San Diego explorations. She joined SDFA and became a regular volunteer, staffing the office and library and coordinating other volunteers. She served on numerous committees, planned programs and entertainments, and shouldered work relating to SDFA’s annual garden tour and its holiday Festival of Trees. Lee was a somewhat reluctant, but accomplished leader, elected as vice president for programs (2017-2019) and co-president (2019-2023). After completing her presidential terms, she continued to serve SDFA in interim
leadership roles.
In the early days, when Floral Association members where first meeting Lee, there was genuine excitement that a trained landscape architect, garden historian, published author and a Master Gardener—all wrapped into one person—was taking an interest in the publication of California Garden magazine. Lee edited the gardening advice column in three 2012 issues and wrote four invited contributions in 2014 and 2015, including the first of her many book reviews. In 2015 Lee became a member of the SDFA editorial board, the team charged with publishing California Garden. She stoked ideas, offered good advice and turned an eagle eye onto magazine copy throughout her years on the board. And she celebrated with the team when California Garden collected a series of excellence in journalism awards from the San Diego Press Club.
From 2018 to 2025, Lee contributed 25 articles and dozens of book reviews to California Garden. She dug into new areas with enthusiasm, becoming our expert on native and medicinal plants, natural plant reserves, vegetable gardening and much more. Almost any topic was grist for her intelligent and objective treatment. Lee’s articulate voice and inviting prose make her writings informative and readable. This is a body of work that meaningfully furthers the Floral Association’s educational mission and ensures Lee Somerville’s place among the consequential contributors to California Garden, now in its 117th year of publication.
Lee’s work on The Complete Writings of Kate Sessions in California Garden, New Edition, is another lasting contribution. She was part of a four-person editorial team that took the book
through every stage of production. The work collects 260 articles written by horticulturist and nursery owner Sessions and includes supplementary material and illustrations not published in the original 1998 edition of The Complete Writings. In November 2020, the book’s completion was celebrated at a combined Kate Sessions birthday party and book launch held at the Marston House Museum and Gardens.
Potatoes, Petunias and Patriotism
From research for her thesis and book, Lee was well informed on the World War I and II national campaigns calling on citizens to grow their own food. Supplementing her information with San Diego research, Lee presented a program on “Victory Gardens” at the January 2017 meeting of the Point Loma Assembly. She displayed examples of seeds, plants and recipes typical of the 1917-19 period.
This well-received talk—absent the San Diego details—found another audience the next year when her original Master Gardener organization flew Lee to Wisconsin to keynote their 2018 Fall Garden Seminar. Lee presented “Potatoes, Petunias, and Patriotism: Wisconsin Victory Gardens.” This determined alliteration survived some good-natured teasing as Lee used it again in the title of her California Garden article on San Diego Floral Association’s promotion of home and community food gardening during World War I (July-August 2020).
Arrival at potatoes, petunias and patriotism is a fine stopping place. There has been so much to say about Lee’s achievements; her contributions; her writing; her will to learn and to educate and to serve; her courage in facing the new and unknown; her wildly successful “second life” in California; her striving and doing. Lee’s whimsical potatoes, petunias and patriotism evoke a smile and finish the story with a reminder of her playfulness and the good-natured exuberance that made her a wonderful friend and colleague
Lee Somerville (1943 – 2026)
The California Garden Editorial Board members who worked closely with Lee in bringing more than 90 issues of California Garden to press offer both heartfelt and lightheared remembrances.
Thea Gurns: Lee Somerville displayed a queenly upright posture accompanying gloriously enunciated English, an enjoying-the-moment smile, a genuine laugh, the scarf collection of a hippie, and a propensity to volunteer. You need a floral arrangement? Set up for December Nights? Help in locating tour gardens? Tea service for forty? A presentation on wartime gardens? Perhaps for the magazine an article on planting strategy, a limoncello recipe, maybe a cottage garden book review? Lee’s range was wide, her choices varied. She accomplished all she did deftly and with intelligence. I admired her.
John Blocker: A little known fact that makes me smile: When Lee lived in Wisconsin she had season tickets to the Green Bay Packers games. Her tailgate recipe for artichoke dip published in California Garden was really good. [The “Green Bay Game Day Dip” recipe is in volume 113, number 4, July- August 2022.]
Rachel Cobb: It’s hard to believe Lee is no longer with us. She was not only an exceptional colleague but also a dear friend. I deeply valued her opinions and cherished her friendship. She generously shared her knowledge and experiences in all aspects of horticulture. When we collaborated on the Cabrillo National Monument article, we visited the site together a few times, and she continued to coordinate with the park staff to ensure our information was accurate. No AI. Lee also offered unconditional friendship. Last September, I traveled to Baja for a few days and left my car parked in front of her house. She moved it slightly
every day so it would not appear abandoned. That was truly going above and beyond. That was Lee—she gave all her expertise, time, and friendship, and she is deeply missed. I am adding all of Lee’s book reviews to the Members Only section of the San Diego Floral Association website. Additionally, all her articles are available on the public side under Archives, Past Issues.
Nancy Carol Carter: I knew that Lee and I would become friends during our first long talk on a bench in Balboa Park. Chatting away, we discovered some shared interests. Lee was from England; I’m a hopeless Anglophile. She was an expert in garden and horticulture history (trained and educated in the field); I was newly exploring local history. She liked to write nonfiction; ditto. She was someone I wanted to know better. As we moved on, years beyond that park bench, I learned so much more by watching Lee connect to the world. I admired her accomplishments and appreciated her contributions. I respected her innate grace and decency. We had fun together and she was my kind and giving friend.
