Fresh Baked Plans For Los Angeles Rainwater Harvesting Project
Posted on 09. May, 2012 by pamela in G3 Blog, G3 Community, G3 Education, G3 Partners, Generation Water, Green Infrastructure, Homeowner, HOWs, Los Angeles Rainwater Harvesting Project, Los Angeles/South Bay, Neighborhood Walks, Watershed Notes
G3's Marianne Simon Joins Team At LARWHP Kick Off
G3 Associate, Marianne Simon joined Pamela Berstler and The River Project Executive Director, Melanie Winter, in kicking off an official pie eating contest in Studio City….
Melanie Winter at LARWHP Kick Off
Wait a second…That’s not what happened at Dupar’s in Studio City. Determined environmental advocate, Melanie Winter, officially kicked off the Los Angeles Rainwater Harvesting Project, after more than three years in the baking. Guy Stivers of Stivers And Associates Landscape Architecture will lead the design team for developing a homeowner-friendly model approach to using rainwater as a resource. Other team members include Marcus Castain of Generation Water providing irrigation auditing and retrofits, Mark Hanna of Geosyntec providing technical modeling, investigations, and monitoring, and Leigh Jerrard of Greywater Corps educating and advocating for residential graywater. G3 will provide Hands-on classes, coaching, and Site Evaluations to help people use their properties as healthy functioning watersheds that will gather rainwater as a resource.
APLD Docents Ocean Friendly Gardens In Mar Vista
Posted on 22. Apr, 2012 by pamela in APLD, G3 Associates, G3 Blog, G3 Community, G3 Design Studio, G3 Education, G3 Partners, Homeowner, Los Angeles/South Bay, Neighborhood Walks, Ocean Friendly Gardens, Surfrider Foundation
The Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase featured several Ocean Friendly Gardens that were docented by enthusiastic and knowledgeable APLD Greater LA District members. Each of these gardens was pre-qualified by an APLD or Surfrider member, who then worked with the landscape designer and homeowner to highlight the Conservation, Permeability, and Retention (CPR) elements of the garden. OFG signs were prominently and proudly displayed, and more than 1,500 visitors got a chance to interact with activists and designers who are making a difference in their watershed.
Joel Lichtenwalter, Crystal Robinson, and Richard Hayden from APLD GLA joined Steve Williams, Jacky Bolbat, and Paul Herzog from Surfrider’s OFG Committee in celebrating at the “After the Tour” Party, held in the OFG designed by G3 Associate, Joel Lichtenwalter. Other gardens on the tour included those designed by G3 Associates: Marilee Kuhlmann, Sheri Powell-Wolff, Jacky Bolbat, Tom Rau and Karen Stern, Marianne Simon, and John Tikotsky. The folks from Grow Native Nursery at the VA Hospital in Westwood, CA, joined in the festivities; their plants were featured in many of the OFGs. The fabulous Shirley Bovshow breezed into the party, showered everyone with her irresistible smile, and documented all the fun for her ever-growing audience.
Low Impact Dunbar-Spring
Posted on 04. Apr, 2012 by pamela in G3 Blog, G3 Community, G3 Education, Green Infrastructure, Neighborhood Walks, Rain Capture, Rain Gardens, Resources, Watershed Notes
Surfrider's Paul Herzog Starting LID Tour At BICAS
The holy book (Rainwater Harvesting For Drylands And Beyond Vol. 1) requires that, at one time during their lives, all Green Infrastructure pilgrims must make their way to Brad Lancaster’s neighborhood in Tucson, Arizona, called Dunbar Spring. Perhaps the most stunning aspect of this oasis of rainwater endowment is the birdsong choir that follows one throughout the visit — birds of all sizes flit from native Mesquite (Prosopis pubescens) to Ironwood (Olneya tesota) and surf the fragile branches of Chuparosa (Justicia californica) and Palo verde (Cercidium microphyllum and Cercidium floridum). Watershed Management Group, hosts of the 2012 Tucson AridLID Conference, arranged for a bicycle tour of Dunbar Spring to get up close and personal with the simple curb cuts and sunken water wells around native trees that identify the neighborhood as the most water-progressive in Tucson.
Curb Cuts
Embracing Water As A Resource
The bicycle tour started at BICAS (Bicycle Inter-Community Art & Salvage), a collectively-run community-based non-profit education and recycling center for bicycles, devoted to the facilitation of affordable alternatives to travel by auto. BICAS and other people-scale businesses arrived in this neighborhood in the mid-1990′s, around the same time Brad Lancaster was making his first, subversive curb cuts allowing stormwater to flow on to his property from the street. This neighborhood-scale green infrastructure is so very simple — cuts or cores in the curb, native and edible trees and understory plants strategically placed in depressions to receive the flow, meandering decomposed granite pathways, traffic-calming water receptacles in the form of bump-outs and circles, and using paint to create perpendicular parking instead of parallel parking, effectively narrowing the wider of the busy streets. The effect is stunning. Time slows to the pace of a stroller or bicycle. Dappled sunlight filters through wispy, native trees. Colors seem brighter in shaded bird and animal refuge nooks. People smile — laugh — enjoy living in Dunbar Spring.
TV Killed Thinking Man
Now that we have experienced the transformative experience of community-based green infrastructure, we are thinking about how best to transport these lessons to the urban deserts of California. What medium best suits the message of cherished resources and better quality of life? Maybe via cave paintings…
Lawn Patrol At EPA Watersmart Innovations Conference 2011
Posted on 21. Oct, 2011 by pamela in G3 Blog, G3 Education, Homeowner, Neighborhood Walks, Professional, Speaker Series, Surfrider Foundation
Surfrider Foundation’s Joe Geever, and G3′s Pamela Berstler, stood their ground in the main exhibit hall at 2011 EPA Watersmart Innovations Conference in Las Vegas, NV. As presenters of a poster entitled “Lawn Patrol,” Joe and Pamela had an opportunity to talk with conference participants as they milled about the hall and during the various breaks between sessions. Lawn Patrol is a community component of Surfrider’s Ocean Friendly Gardens (OFG) Program in which people are invited out into their neighborhood to join Surfrider volunteers and others in walking the hood and evaluating homes for Conservation, Permeability, and Retention (C.P.R. to revive our waterways), the key components of OFG. Participants start at a known OFG and then compare neighborhood homes to that model. It’s a great opportunity to meet neighbors and learn about C.P.R. Lawn Patrol is social, educational, and fun!
Keep your eyes on www.oceanfriendlygardens.org to find out more about the next Lawn Patrol in your area.
Surfrider Foundation's Joe Geever at EPA Watersmart Conference 2011
Doesn’t Joe look like he’s having fun?
G3 Says Hi to NYC High Line
Posted on 09. Oct, 2011 by pamela in Build Habitat, East Coast, G3 Blog, G3 Community, Green Infrastructure, Nature Lessons, Neighborhood Walks, Watershed Notes
NYC High Line
Over the past two decades, New York City has been slowly transforming itself into an even more liveable place with an emphasis on green space and urban food production. One of the City’s most amazing projects (perhaps one of the most amazing projects in any urban environment of the past decade) is the High Line Project.
Diversity At The NYC High Line
The High Line Garden sprang from the dreams of a group of visionary neighborhood activists who worked as tenaciously as a pimpernel in a sidewalk crack to raise money, receive permits, design, and execute this extraordinary public space. The High Line is reviving the spirits or ordinary New Yorkers and millions of tourists who visit the city every year, as well as the vitality of the surrounding neighborhoods. Native and climate-appropriate plants attract insects, birds, and curious onlookers.
Laputa or High Line?
Truly a castle in the sky, reminiscent of something out of Gulliver’s Travels or more recently, Hayao Miyazaki’s Laputa, the High Line is suspended above the streets and din of New York. Trees and shrubs, grasses and flowering perennials welcome, shade, and embrace you as you explore this mini magical kingdom above it ALL.
The garden is structured more like a green roof than traditional garden, and some of the green infrastructure is visible to the naked eye, including struts for staking the larger trees, an in-line drip irrigation system, and eco-pave walkway grid similar to that used by G3 at both the Sucher Residence OFG and West Basin’s Edward C. Little WRF OFG Demonstration Garden. The plants are installed in a gravel or decomposed granite area and mulched with gravel.
Much of the older planting (it has been done in phases) has created a living mulch as the grasses, perennials, and shrubs have grown into each other. It will be interesting to see how the plant material responds over time to not having any organic matter as mulch. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the High Line is the ways in which people on the High Line are encouraged to interact with each other and with the street below. Benches, some rolling or connectable with one another, are placed at regular intervals and are wonderfully suited for lounging around on a lunch hour or taking a brief afternoon siesta. An amphitheater descends from the High Line walkway to reveal a huge glassed-in overpass through which seated High Line visitors can watch the traffic on the street below. Many windows of the adjacent skyscrapers are devoid of window treatments, creating a mutually voyeuristic experience — a glimpse into the details of how truly urban dwellers experience their space.
NYC High Line Views
The High Line is an out-of-the-box example of Green Infrastructure that should be applied in EVERY urban setting across the country.
