ARTHUR C. GIBSON, MEMBG Director
Donald Packard Woolley had been hired in August 1944 by the grounds division at UCLA to work on campus plantings. A couple years later he was hand picked and then tutored by George Groenewegen (see MEMBG Newsletter 4, Winter) to become the second superintendent of our botanical garden, in 1947.
Don was born in Medford, Massachusetts (7 June 1903). On his father's side, Don traced his ancestors to Puritan stock of 1620, and on his mother's side to Dutch Huguenot stock (New York) to 1623. Just prior to graduation in 1923, he had to leave Malden High School in Massachusetts because his father became ill, to work as a bacon slicing foreman for John Morrell in Boston. As a young man he had worked frequently as a tree surgeon. His big break into horticulture came in 1926 when he trained at the Davey Tree Surgery Institute in Kent, Ohio, claimed by Will Rogers as having the greatest grafters in the world.
Following his training in tree grafting, Don came to California to seek new opportunities, first hitchhiking to the San Francisco area (1927-1928) and eventually moving to Los Angeles. His passion for horticulture was maintained throughout the years by running a side business in tree and shrub pruning and surgery, but usually he kept a regular job as well. During the depression until 1942 he held many positions with Piggly Wiggly and Safeway, and for a year helped the war effort as a lathe operator and machinist. But at the age of 41 his career switched entirely to horticulture when he joined the staff at UCLA.
Don Woolley became a field assistant to professors conducting research on subtropical fruit trees. Here he could practice his long-held skills as a tree surgeon and grafter. At the Veteran Avenue citrus and avocado plots of UCLA he was the individual primarily responsible for mass grafting. His skills and professionalism earned him the respect of the horticulture faculty. In 1945 he first met botanical garden superintendent Groenewegen, who, at UCLA retirement, trained Don to manage the botanical collection.
During "the Woolley years" (1947-1955), the botanical garden was rapidly converted into a forest of trees. Don had a close association with George Spaulding, who then was the only employee at the fledgling Los Angeles State and County Arboretum in Arcadia. Spaulding propagated materials to be used for planting the arboretum, with special emphasis on trees from Australia, and graciously gave extras to UCLA. Such a circumstance is why our collection grew so many interesting types of Myrtaceae, such as eucalypts, melaleucas, callistemons, and the picturesque Agonis flexuosa (see MEMBG Newsletter 5, Summer). Many of these were welcomed additions following "The Big Freeze," when in January 1949 many Westwood plants succumbed to subzero temperatures (see MEMBG Newsletter 4, Winter). By the early 1950s, Woolley had also assembled a very diversified collection of figs (genus Ficus), which were contributed by Ira J. Condit, a world's expert of figs doing research in Riverside.
Many physical changes took place in the botanical garden during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Post-war growth of campus started in 1947, when the arroyo was filled around The Bridge. To create Dickson Plaza and Schoenberg Hall, six acres of the original botanical garden were surrendered, and one zone of the conifer collection was thereby eliminated. By 1949, the northern edge of the garden was built up with fill, in preparation for future development of UCLA academic buildings and parking structures. Immediately Plant Physiology, with two state-of-the-art greenhouses and large growth chambers, was built and became operational (1950). Garden operations at "Groenewegen's Shack" next to the Torrey pine were shifted to the present location on the western edge of the garden, where the replacement lathhouse was constructed in the early 1950s. During the early 1950s, a large succulent collection was lost to construction of parking. Also during the early 1950s, the UCLA medical center took shape along South Tiverton and a clear western boundary of the botanical garden was established. So it was that the garden was newly defined as the eight acres in the southeastern corner of the UCLA campus. A concrete stairway from the top to bottom of the botanical garden was constructed, and became a distinctive feature of the garden until removed in 1996 to enable handicapped accessible paths to be built (see MEMBG Newsletter 1, Winter).
Don Woolley left UCLA in 1955 after picking his successor, Wayne L. Hansis, to assume the position of chief horticulturist for Los Angeles County at the arboretum in Arcadia. After that, Don Woolley forever gained the admiration of Angelenos by creating the county's South Coast Botanic Gardens on a seemingly worthless garbage and waste dump on the Palos Verdes Peninsula (1961). The major accomplishments of his productive life in Southern California horticulture, especially after leaving UCLA, have been recounted elsewhere.