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Kensington Pepper Trees Update & Action Alert
By Ann Jarmusch and Maggie McCann
March/April 2021
 Kensington Resistance gathers on Marlborough Street to protect three pepper trees from being felled by City of San Diego contractors. |
 Protesters make use of their hours keeping vigil to clean up the parkway beneath the pepper trees. |
 Spirited protesters precisely altered a City No Parking sign, warning "Your tree is next." All photos by Maggie McCann |
On February 2, 2021, Maggie McCann and fellow pepper tree lovers began a vigil, starting at 6:30am weekdays, under three 110-year-old California pepper trees on Marlborough Drive in the Kensington neighborhood. Maggie wrote about past efforts to save these and more than 30 other pepper trees last fall and SOHO placed them on its 2020 Most Endangered List.
Twice in February, the group warded off contractor crews sent by the City of San Diego to take the trees down. Kensington residents and their consulting arborist Sam Oludunfe, and the Kensington-Talmadge Planning Group have a running dispute with the City's assessment of the mighty pepper trees' health and stability. Sentiment runs so high that two lawsuits have been filed about the tree removals.
The "Kensington Resistance" added handmade protest signs to the City's No Parking signs hung around the massive tree trunks. The protest, which drew dozens of supporters from as far as Carlsbad, also attracted extensive media coverage from The Reader, San Diego Union-Tribune, KPBS, KUSI, Channel 8, Channel 10, and others.
Maggie told the media and elected officials that during a January windstorm, "five queen palms fell over in Kensington, damaging several cars and a street light. None of the pepper trees so much as lost a limb." She pointed out that the State's Western Tree Failure Database contains very few incidents of pepper trees failing suddenly.
There's more to the ongoing dispute than the trees' condition. For years, Maggie and others have been fighting to save these trees, planted in 1910 when Kensington Park was planned. In early 2018, they nominated 37 of them to become City Heritage Trees. Since then, the City has chopped down three. The remaining trees have now been included in the California Historical Resources Inventory System.
City Policy 900-19 went into effect with special protection and techniques for extending the lives of Heritage Trees. But City Forester Brian Widener has declined to forward the nomination for review by the Community Forest Advisory Board. After Kensington residents appealed to Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, the trees were to get their CFAB hearing on February 10, but the meeting was cancelled due to lack of a quorum. On February 25, Maggie and others sent written comments to the City Council Environment Committee.
Please urge Mayor Todd Gloria to intervene and save the majority of pepper trees at (619) 236-6330 or mayortoddgloria@sandiego.gov. Follow new developments at Historic Kensington Trees.
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