Gerda Isenberg was a California native plants nurserywoman, owner of Yerba Buena Nursery, civil rights activist, and humanitarian. She was born in Germany in 1901 and moved with her family back to her father's birthplace of Hawaii to take over her grandfather's farm after he passed away. Isenberg attended a garden school for women on the outside of Hamburg where she learned various gardening and farming techniques. She married her husband in 1923 after he had secured land in Carmel Valley California to ranch. They later moved to Los Altos in 1928 and Isenberg started a European bookshop in San Francisco with an acquaintance in 1931 which lasted roughly until WWII began. In the early days of the war, Isenberg became involved with assisting German and Austrian refugees in San Francisco and helped bring them over to America to resettle them. After the war, Isenberg ran for State Assembly in 1950 and lost to the incumbent but went on to work with the Palo Alto Fair Play Council and American Friends Service Committee. She later founded the Yerba Buena Nursery in Woodside California where she sold ferns, native plants, learned about nursery management and ran an intern program. In this interview Isenberg discusses her early years in Germany, prejudices stemming from WWI, marriage, moving to California, assisting with refugees and Japanese-Americans during relocation, her activism, and how she ran her nursery. This interview also contains appended writings for The Friend, articles about Palo Alto Fair Play Council and Isenberg, the Yerba Buena Nursery cultivars and "The Yerba Buena People". This interview is part of a group of interviews documenting California horticulture.