Theodore Payne Foundation

Theodore Payne was born in Church Brampton, Northamptonshire, England in 1872. His parents worked on the Manor Farm in the Althorp Estates. There, on the estate, is a California Sequoia that was brought to England in seed form. The tree still stands to this day. By age twelve Theodore’s mother and father had passed away and he was sent to Ackworth Academy, a Quaker boarding school, where he studied natural history and botany. Payne was apprenticed to J Cheal & Sons, where he learned the nursery and seed business and assisted in the horticultural installations for the Crystal Palace. On June 10, 1893 Payne arrived in New York and traveled west to California where he worked as an estate manager and then as a seed salesman for the Germain Fruit and Seed Company from 1893 to 1903. At the end of 1903 he was able to purchase his own nursery at 440 S. Broadway in Los Angeles and then a few years later the nursery moved to 345 S. Main Street. It was then that he began to specialize in native California plants. As his business and influence grew, Payne seemed to touch every important native plant space that existed at the time. He helped to create gardens for Pomona College, Oc- cidental College, Washington Park in Pasadena and installed a five acre California Wild Garden at the corner of Figueroa and Martin Luther King Blvd. It contained 262 species of native plants. He provided insight and plant materials for the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, assisted in the original design of the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden and then later, in 1951, helped with the relocation of the garden to Claremont. Payne worked with the Descanso Gardens to install a wildflower meadow and native plant area, both before and after it was sold to the Los Ange- les Estate.
During the 1930’s a large portion of his land was taken by the city to make stormwater improvements and, in 1941, the bank foreclosed on the land. He was, however, able to lease a small portion of what was the nursery and focused only on California native plants and seeds. The Theodore Payne Foundation (TPF) was created in 1960 and Payne and the Foundation started looking for a new site for the nursery. The Foundation was almost moved to the Whittier Narrows but, upon learning that they intended to sell plants, the Army Corps withdrew permission. Three years later Theodore Payne passed away at the age of 91. Not long after- ward, in 1966, Eddie Merrill, a fellow nurseryman and friend of Theodore Payne, donated twenty acres in Sun Valley to the Foundation, where it has remained to this day.