Theodore Payne Foundation

10459 Tuxford St
Sun Valley, CA 91352

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.


The TPF, like its founder, is a huge voice in the native plant community of Southern California. Their goal is to increase the presence and the understanding of native plants. They started teaching courses in 1976 with a propagation course taught by Burnnell Yarick. In the spring they run the “Wildflower Hotline”, by phone and online, which provides information on what wildflowers are blooming at the moment and where to see them. In 2009 TPF launched a Native Plant Library of more than 1,000 entries of native plants with guides and horticultural information. In 2011 they received a $930,000 grant from the State of California for the construction of edu- cational facilities. These facilities are now surrounded by beautiful demonstration gardens. In the spring TPF hosts the Native Plant Garden Tour, a self guided tour of public and private native plant gardens throughout LA. 2017 saw the completion of the La Fetra Nature Education Center, with two new classrooms, an amphithe- ater, interpretive signage and replanted demonstration gardens. 2018 saw the creation of the Long Live LA seed bank.


There are several demonstration gardens on site, those surrounding the head- quarters, the La Fetra Education Center, and the Fire Management Demonstration Garden. The nursery grounds themselves have many beautiful plants as well and in the spring there is the Wildflower Hill Trail. The TPF is an irreplaceable resource for native plants in Southern California.

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