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George Hansen was a German-born American horticulturist and landscape architect. With especial love for children, he advanced the campaign for kindergartens as well as for city parks and playgrounds.
Background
George Hansen was born on April 15, 1863, in the old town of Hildesheim, Hanover, Germany, the son of Adolph and Auguste Hansen. His mother was the daughter of J. G. K. Oberdieck, sometimes called the “father of German pomology, ” who on account of his services to the Prussian State had received the privilege of a free college education to such of his grandsons as desired to specialize in horticulture.
Education
Young Hansen, after completing the Gymnasium course in his native town, was sent to Potsdam to become a student in the Royal College of Horticulture.
Career
After his graduation, in 1885, George Hanson went to England, entering the employ of F. Sander & Company. At first he worked with hybrids in the orchid house and later used his skill with a pencil in making illustrations for the orchid journal, Reichenbachia. It was at this time that he began the preparation of The Orchid Hybrids, a work requiring special knowledge and indefatigable industry and perseverance. An enumeration and classification of all the orchid hybrids made known up to that time, it was published in parts between 1895 and 1897.
After some two years in England, Hansen determined to move far west, and accordingly, in 1887, settled in San Francisco, where he engaged in nursery propagation. His talents were soon in demand elsewhere, however. The central Sierra foothills, fertile and beautiful as found by the American pioneers in gold days, had been cruelly scarred and wastefully exploited by miner, logger, stockman, and hunter. To restore and improve the earlyday agriculture, the University of California College of Agriculture established an experiment station in the Amador County foothills and, in 1889, appointed George Hansen as foreman of it.
Here for seven years Hansen used his science in behalf of the foothill farmer: introducing modern methods and new varieties; urging fencing and resting periods to restore the native grasses and clovers; and pleading always for protection of the native vegetative cover to save the land from erosion. In connection with this work he made the drawings for the second part (1890) of West American Oaks by Edward Lee Greene. This illustration work developed Hansen’s field interest in the genus Quercus and enabled him to call the attention of botanists to remarkable variants of the native species of oak which he discovered in the region of the foothill station.
In 1896 Hansen began work as landscape architect in Berkeley, especially in an advisory capacity to cities and towns confronted with park problems. Here he did a service in urging natural treatment. He was handicapped by an injury to his spine - the prime cause of his giving up the foothill station - but the Sierran experience had fortified his natural idealism and deepened his altruistic spirit; he continued his activities, buoyant, cheerful and eager, under a condition that to most men would have seemed crushing. He died in Berkeley, in his forty-fifth year.