Matilija Ojai School Yard Habitat
Posted on 23. Dec, 2011 by pamela in Build Habitat, G3 Associates, G3 Blog, G3 Community, G3 Design Studio, G3 Media, G3 Partners, Living Soil, Ocean Friendly Gardens, Rain Gardens, School Yard Habitats, Ventura County, Video
G3 Qualified Trainer, and NEW Ventura County Regional Coordinator, Renee Roth, has been working with the Matilija Junior High School in Ojai, CA for more than two years to transform a pesticide-adled lawn area into a US Fish & Wildlife School Yard Habitat.
Renee Roth at Matilija Ojai SYH
Renee gave G3′s Pamela Berstler a tour to show off the sheet mulching, grading, and drainage that already has been done. An examination of the mulch pile, made as G3 recommends, with fresh tree trimmings, yielded a couple of surprises including the iPod video (above) and millions of FUN-GUYS (mycorrhizal fungi) building their soil-food-web.
Renee has secured funding for this transformation from a US Fish & Wildlife School Yard Habitat Grant. School personnel and students contribute time and energy to move the project along. The objective is to have a completely CA native landscape that absorbs all of the rainwater generated by adjacent hardscape surfaces. So this project is also an Ocean Friendly Garden!
For more information about the Matilija Ojai School Yard Habitat, check out Renee’s website. http://matilijasyh.com/home/
Oxnard Residents Learn HOW To Lose The Lawn
Posted on 13. Dec, 2011 by pamela in Build Habitat, G3 Blog, G3 Community, G3 Design Studio, G3 Education, G3 In The News, G3 Media, G3 Partners, Homeowner, HOWs, Living Soil, Ocean Friendly Gardens, Rain Gardens, Sod Story, Speaker Series, Surfrider Foundation, Ventura County, Video, Watershed Notes
Oxnard's Newest Ocean Friendly Garden
G3 led a series of Hands-on Workshops (HOWs) sponsored by the City of Oxnard, to help people understand how to transform their lawn into an Ocean Friendly Garden using significantly less water, with healthy, living soil supporting CA native plants, and retaining the rainwater from the adjacent roof of the home. Ten homeowners followed the series from the Watershed Basics Class (held in a classroom), through the Site Evaluation, Sheet Mulching a.k.a. Soil Lasagna, ending with Planting & Irrigation.
Making Soil Lasagna In Oxnard
The resulting Ocean Friendly Garden, or “Sponge Garden,” is an inspiration to the entire neighborhood and all residents of Oxnard, demonstrating Surfrider Foundation’s tenets of C.P.R. – Conservation (native plants, no chemicals used to remove turf, drip irrigation), Permeability (healthy, living soil created through sheet mulching), and Retention (downspouts re-directed into the landscape sponge).
The City of Oxnard Ocean Friendly Garden is located at 2820 Hill Ave., and is visible from the street. Please do not walk on the property. The garden is best viewed from the sidewalk.
This Oxnard Lawn Will Soon Be Gone!
West Basin MWD Carson Headquarters OFG Complete
Posted on 12. Oct, 2011 by pamela in Attainable Sustainable, Build Habitat, G3 Blog, G3 Community, G3 Design Studio, Los Angeles/South Bay, Ocean Friendly Gardens, Watershed Notes, West Basin, West Basin Carson Headquarters
West Basin MWD Carson Headquarters OFG
G3′s Founding Member, Marilee Kuhlmann, put the finishing touches on the West Basin MWD Carson Headquarters Ocean Friendly Garden in collaboration with California licensed landscape contractor, Clark & White Landscape. The WB Carson HQ Garden was started in July 2010 and only just finished September 2011 because of construction delays surrounding the installation of the brand new monument sign.
Arbutus 'Marina' Graces West Basin Entry
Many of the more mature plantings such as the Arbutus ‘Marina’ multi-trunk at the entry, the Platanus racemosa and the Arctostaphylos ‘Louis Edmonds’are coming into their own, spreading their limbs, and starting to demonstrate their inspired greatness.
Transplanted Crepe Myrtles
This installation repeats the combination of Arctostaphylos and Ceanothus throughout the garden, whether in sun or shade, large and small. The result is a predominately evergreen garden, punctuated by strong architectural plants that bring wildlife into the most shadowy recesses of the parking lot. G3 enjoys its extensive collaboration with West Basin MWD whose staff and board have shown the courage of their convictions for conservation by investing in the two Ocean Friendly Demonstration Gardens at their main offices in El Segundo (Ed Little WRF), and Carson (Headquarters).
Check out what this property looked like in early 2010.
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.
West Basin Edward C. Little OFG Blooms In August Sunshine
Posted on 04. Aug, 2011 by pamela in Build Habitat, Edward C. Little Water Recycling Facility, G3 Blog, G3 Design Studio, G3 Partners, Los Angeles/South Bay, Ocean Friendly Gardens, Rain Gardens, Watershed Notes, West Basin
CA Sycamores Welcome You To ECLWRF OFG
People attend our Basics Classes and say that the California native garden is dead and dry in summer. HUH? For anyone who still believes that myth (no doubt perpetuated by someone in the turf industry), make the trip to the Ocean Friendly Garden designed by G3 at West Basin’s Edward C. Little Water Recycling Facility (ECLWRF) in El Segundo and see for yourself the bloomin’ California native garden in summer. During winter months, this runoff-reducing garden holds on to more than 1,200 gallons of rainwater at each rain event. The mulched beds, walkway and underground infiltration pits capture the equivalent of a First Flush (1″ of rain after a dry period) from a 2,000 sq. foot roof. The actual footprint of the adjacent building is more than 8,000 sq. ft., so this garden is receiving and holding on to a lot of water during the typical rainy season.
But now we are enjoying the sunshine of summer, and the only evidence of the previous season’s rainfall lies in the voluptuousness of the garden.
Hummingbird At ECLWRF OFG
Salvia greggii (Autumn sage), Mimulus aurantiacus (yellow monkey flower), Tecoma stans (trumpet bush — ok, so maybe calling this one California native is stretching it, but Texas and Baja can do so) and Achillea ‘Island Pink’ are still glowing strong in the August sunshine.
The evergreens like Heteromeles ‘Davis Gold’ (toyon with gold berries), Baccharis pilularis ‘Pidgeon Point’ (coyote bush), Rhmanus californica (coffeeberry) and Arctostaphylos(manzanita) are vivid green, perky, showing their little flowers or nascent berries, and supporting the “bones” or structure of the garden.
CA Natives Keep Cool In August
My favorite part of this garden is the trio of Platanus racemosa(California sycamore) trees popping up at the entry to the garden, and now so tall that they are almost peeking out of their enclosure. Entering this garden from the “sycamore side” reminds me of entering a cool dell in summertime and immediately I am breathing easier and feeling more relaxed. Two years after its completion, West Basin’s ECLWRF Ocean Friendly Demonstration Garden truly IS demonstrating that EVERY urban garden could bring beauty and relaxation into our lives if we concentrated on converting our properties into Ocean Friendly landscapes.
West Basin ECLWRF OFG August 2011
The world-renown West Basin ECLWRF is located at 1935 S. Hughes Way, El Segundo, CA. Parking is available in the adjacent parking lot. The ECLWRF gives tours of the facility on a regular basis. Call 310.414.0183 for more information.
