John McLaren (1846-1943) was Superintendent of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The memorial to John McLaren is located near the entrance of the John McLaren Rhododendron Dell, a bit west of the Conservatory of Flowers, along John F. Kennedy Drive. It was not until after McLaren's death in 1943 that the life-size monument of him, created about 1911 by sculptor and Park Commissioner M. Earl Cummings, was erected in the dell. Park lore has it that McLaren hid the monument soon after its creation under an old mattress in the West Side Stables, and it was not discovered until after his death.

The following is from Dickson's book about San Francisco: There was a young Scotsman came to California in 1870. John McLaren he was called, as though it were a single word—JohnMcLaren. Throughout his life friends would meet him and greet him with, "How are you, JohnMcLaren, and how are your trees?"

When he came to California he and saw a new and young country, a country of young men who were enthusiastic builders. Everything was new and young; the fortunes that were being made; the cities that were being built. Young and new! But he saw one other thing that meant more to him than all the other amazing wonders of the young West. In the hills behind San Mateo he saw the Sequoia semprevirens–the "evergreen" redwoods. They were the oldest living things on earth. Their seeds had fallen and the earth had taken them and new trees had grown before Christ was born. They had stood for more than two thousand years, the everlasting trees. They would stand through untold future generations unless–unless the avarice of man and the folly of man should spread destruction and fire through the glorious avenues of the groves.

McLaren looked at the redwoods and said, "I, too, would like to grow redwoods." Men who knew the young Scotsman laughed and told him to stick to his gardens. It took thousands of years to grow redwoods. Now, that dream of growing redwoods was only a phase, an incident, in the life of McLaren. But because I believe it led to the most beautiful pages of the story of his life, I will return to it presently.

McLaren had been a dairyman in his native land and had driven his cattle along the banks of the Bannock. Before he was twenty he deserted the dairy lands and went to Edinburgh to study horticulture in the Royal Botanical Gardens. His curriculum was a practical one; he was hired as gardener’s helper in the gardens. After he had served his apprenticeship he followed the path of dreams to California, to the fields of gold, to the land that was said to have the climate of Italy and the beauty of an English country garden. He came to San Francisco in 1870–and saw the redwoods. And he remembered his father’s frequently reiterated admonition: "Me boy, if ye have nothing to do, go plant a tree and it’ll grow while ye sleep."

So, young McLaren planted trees, planted them on the huge estate of George Howard that was sprawled across the San Mateo foothills; he planted trees on the ranch of Leland Stanford at Palo Alto, and turned grainfields into a botanical garden. On a small peninsula called Coyote Point that juts into the Bay, he planted at one time seventy thousand trees. And in the days that were still the days of his youth, he said, "I hope to plant a million trees before I die. Firs–pines–redwoods-eucalyptus–a million trees!"

So, McLaren planted trees for fifteen years, and during those years the village that was sprawled along the water front of San Francisco Bay became a city. It was no longer a boom town, no longer a hectic mushroom town. Its dwellings had reached westward, past the elegant, rococo mansions of Mason and Taylor and O’Farrell streets; its homes were reaching out across Van Ness Avenue, out toward the Presidio and the hundreds of thousands of acres of sand dunes that lay between it and the ocean.

And in those sand dunes an idea was conceived, so fantastic that even the men who dreamed the dream said, "It’s only a utopian fantasy that never can come true, but it would be a fine thing if some day, some way, those acres of sand could be turned into a great park."

Then someone thought of McLaren. He had been successful in his first big enterprise in Scotland; he had planted the grass called "sea bent" in the shifting sands that were swept by the winds of the North Sea and had fastened down the sands along the Firth of Forth. Perhaps he could plant sea bent in the hundred thousand acres of city-owned dunes that ran down to the waters of Golden Gate. Yes, McLaren said he could do it. Yes, and he would take on the job of building a Golden Gate Park. But first he had certain demands to make. These were his demands:

He was to have thirty thousand dollars a year for grading and planting. He was to have all the water he wanted and needed. He was to have the sweepings of San Francisco streets to fertilize his ground.

And above all, he insisted that never in this park of his should a sign read "Keep Off the Grass." The parks and the green lawns were to be places where men could sleep in the sun, where children could play, where the city could enjoy green grass and shade trees and beds of flowers unhampered by "No Trespass" signs.

Well, of course, that last demand was a whim; they would humor the young Scotsman and there would be no "Keep Off the Grass" signs. As for water, he could have as much as he wanted–if he could find it. So McLaren built two Dutch windmills out near the ocean and pumped water. And the city smiled a kindly smile and said, "He’ll pump salt water. Nothing will grow." But there was no salt in the water McLaren pumped. As for the sweepings of the city streets, obviously he was welcome to them. Welcome? It almost broke McLaren’s heart when the horse and buggy gave way to the automobile.

But, about the first demand–thirty thousand dollars a year–people said the city fathers were crazy. Editorials appeared in the papers. San Francisco was reverting to the madness of forty-niner days; it figured to turn sand dunes into flower gardens and that could not be done. And McLaren planted his sea bent and his seedlings. They said there was no excuse for a hundred-thousand-acre park in San Francisco. And McLaren planted rhododendrons. They said, "Well, if there’s going to be a park there’ll have to be statues." So they build statues of every great and near-great man of whom they could think.

McLaren hated statues. "Stookies!" he called them. So, every time the city fathers planted a "stookie" planted trees to hide it. Some of the most beautiful groves planted by McLaren are there to hide the "stookie" of a famous man.

For almost ten years he emptied the sweepings of the city streets into his hundred thousand acres of sand dune. And Golden Gate Park became a beautiful reality. The trees were growing, the flowers were growing, bridle paths ran along the broad driveways, an artificial lake was created in a plateau of sand–a lake called Strawberry where, with the instinct of the busman on holiday, sailors take their girls rowing in little boats. The park almost reached to the ocean’s edge; almost, but not quite.

McLaren had tied down the sand dunes, but he had not yet controlled the ocean waves that swept new sands over the man-made garden. Something had to be done about the ocean waves and McLaren was the man to do it. He put the waves to work. Along the ocean beach he put down a row of thousands of bundles of laths. In front of the laths, facing the ocean, he dumped twigs and branches that had been pruned from the park trees. The ocean piled sand into this simple barricade. A nice ridge ran the length of the beach. McLaren planted more laths atop the ridge. Again the ocean piled sand around them. There were more laths, higher still, more twigs and branches piled up, more sand sweeping it from the ocean. That was a job that took forty years, and when it was finished the ocean had built an esplanade twenty feet high and three hundred yards wide. That is the story of the Esplanade with its double highway that runs from the Cliff House along the ocean’s edge, mile after mile. It was a task that took McLaren and the Pacific Ocean forty years. But McLaren never bothered about time. He still wanted to plant a million trees and grow redwoods.

In the early "nineties there was an exposition in Chicago, a world’s fair. A San Francisco delegation visited it, let by Michel de Young, a newspaper publisher of San Francisco. De. Young, inspired by the Chicago Fair, said he would build a finer one in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. He headed a subscription list, raised funds, and, as the country was just emerging from a national panic, the Midwinter Fair opened.

It was not much of a fair as world’s fairs go. Little is remembered of it. Old-timers will tell of the Midway, of the Ferris Wheel, of the Streets of Cairo where Little Egypt danced. They will tell of Chiquita, the smallest woman in the world, of the Indian Village and of the Music Stand. The Fair went the dilapidated way of all discarded fairs, and all that remained was a museum and the Music Stand.

The museum was the depository for all the old junk San Franciscans did not want in their parlors. It took years to clear the junk away, but today, according to established records, more people pass through the turnstile of the beautiful De Young Museum than visit the Metropolitan Museum in New York in a year’s time. As for the bandstand, it remained, and in the days when society still traveled in victorias and phaetons and buckboards, each Sunday everyone who counted drove his or her horses around it and listened to the melodies of Victor Herbert and the

"Chimes of Normandy," and the "Fledermaus." Children found their haven just east of the bandstand in the playground where donkey rides were a thrilling delight and the most delicious spongecake in the world was to be had. All of which has little to do with McLaren. Little–and yet McLaren loved children, and his park was their park.

With the passing of the Midwinter Fair a new and dangerous craze swept the land–the bicycle age. Tricycles, bicycles, tandems, and family affairs with four, five, or six seats spun along the path to the Cyclers’ Rest. There the gay blades smoked Sweet Caporals and bought Queen Charlottes for their bloomered girl friends. And snorted and went right ahead planting his flowers and his trees.

That was all more than forty years ago. Today tens of thousands find their way to the De Young Museum, the Steinhart Aquarium, the Fleishhaker Zoo, or to the Conservatories where exotic flowers bloom. They listen to the music from the bandstand. They please the soul of McLaren by walking on the grass. They walk in quiet awe through the tens of thousands of blooming rhododendrons or row their boats on Strawberry Lake–Stow Lake, some call it. They steer their model yachts across the yacht lake in front of the Portals of the Past, and walk through Lovers’ Lane, and shriek from the bleachers at Kezar Stadium where the East-West Game is an annual event.

And, hovering over it all–this most beautiful of parks grown in shifting sands–is the spirt of McLaren. He died in 1943; he was ninety-seven years old. For eighty years he had lived by his father’s admonition: "Me boy, if ye have nothing to do, go plant a tree and it’ll grow while ye sleep." McLaren planted more than two million trees.

The Sequoia sempervirens. The oldest living things on earth, trees that took thousands of years to attain their full stature! McLaren wanted to grow redwoods, and wise men laughed at his folly. So, from seeds McLaren planted the grove of Sequoia sempervirens, the evergreen redwoods, in Golden Gate Park. He was eighty years when he planted them. He lived to be ninety-seven, a clear-eyed little Scotsman working almost to the day of his death. And when he died, his grove of redwoods stood in Golden Gate Park–trees thirty feet high!

No, McLaren did not like statues–"Stookies." But he loved trees.

Sources: Dickson, Samuel (1947). John McLaren in San Francisco is My Home. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. pp. 215-221. and : http://www.lightight.com/GGP/mem_images/Mem4P13.html

A book about "Boss Gardener" is said to be a personal portrait of Golden Gate Park's most famous superintendent. For over half a century John McClaren preserved and protected San Francisco's most prized possession. His influence effected many positive changes for the Park, and he was instrumental in developing much of Golden Gate Park as it is today.

Source: Boss Gardener : The Life and Times of John McLaren by Tom Girvan Aikman, Tom G. Aikman