Voila! Ventura Lawn Vanishes!
Posted on 09. May, 2012 by pamela in G3 Blog, G3 Community, G3 Education, G3 In The News, G3 Media, G3 Partners, Homeowner, HOWs, Ocean Friendly Gardens, Rain Gardens, Surfrider Foundation, Ventura County, Watershed Notes
Surfrider Ventura GAP Workday Site
The lawn at 1538 San Nicholas St. in Ventura vanished last week in anticipation of the Ventura Surfrider Ocean Friendly Gardens Garden Assistance Party Workday on May 12. The GAP Workday is the fourth and final event in the creation of an Ocean Friendly Demonstration Garden through a California Coastal Commission Whale Tail Grant for the County of Ventura. Since March, the grant has enabled more than 35 people to attend a Watershed Basics Class and Hands-on Workshop: Site Evaluation, as well as subsidizing a professional training Core Concepts Workshop. People who received scholarships to the Core Concepts Workshop are paying it forward by assisting G3′s Pamela Berstler and Renee Roth (Ventura/Santa Barbara G3 Regional Coordinator) in fulfilling the mission of the grant: to build an Ocean Friendly Garden in a highly visible residential site through neighborhood involvement, sparking change within a community. Learn more about what’s happening by reading the OFG Article Ventura Breeze 5.2.12 contributed by John Burke, a.k.a. LAJOHNNY, licensed landscape architect and recent CCW Ventura survivor.
Dan Long's Lawn Before GAP Workday
Since the grass on this property was mostly kikuyu and warm-season bermuda, a sod cutter was employed to remove the bulk of the organic matter on top. In preparation for the Workday, homeowner and environmental advocate, Dan Long, will be tackling some hand removal of the largest clumps of remaining grass roots and stolons. Dan also is arranging delivery of the materials: plants, compost, mulch, paper for sheet composting, and downspout redirecting supplies. Oh, and food too! Sign up for the event so we have enough pizza.
Plant List For City of Pasadena’s First Public Sponge Garden
Posted on 03. May, 2012 by pamela in G3 Blog, G3 Community, G3 Design Studio, Los Angeles/South Bay, Pasadena Sponge Garden, Plants, Rain Gardens, Resources, Watershed Notes
Pasadena Sponge Garden Gals
It all started in August 2011, when the Pasadena Planning Dept.’s Cultural Arts Division teamed up with Pasadena Power & Water and the Public Works Dept. to consider building a garden through community participation. Nancy Long from Power & Water called G3 to meet a site that was going to host a public art installation, and the artist was keen to have a “rain garden” surrounding the art. Although this first site didn’t gel, eight months later, the Pasadena Sponge Garden at the corners of Union and Catalina Aves. became a reality. Here’s a Plant List: G3 Design Studio Pasadena Rain Garden Plants and Planting Plan: Pasadena Sponge Garden Design 042812 for the garden. Additionally, we’ve included a Hydrozone List: Hydrozones Pasadena Sponge Garden for the plant selection. For more great information about lots of Water Conservation topics, check out Pasadena Power & Water’s website. G3′s looking forward to the next collaboration with the amazing team from the City of Pasadena.
Pasadena Residents Learn HOW To Sponge Up The Rain Garden
Posted on 01. May, 2012 by pamela in City of Pasadena, G3 Blog, G3 Community, G3 Design Studio, G3 Education, G3 In The News, G3 Media, G3 Partners, HOWs, Los Angeles/South Bay, Pasadena Sponge Garden, Rain Gardens, Watershed Notes
Christie Beniston's Topairies At Pasadena Sponge Garden
A collaboration on the part of Pasadena’s Public Works Dept. and Power & Water, along with Pasadena Planning Department’s Cultural Arts Division and G3 led to the installation of an amazing Sponge Garden at the intersection of Union and Catalina St. through an all-day G3 Hands-on Workshop. The Sponge Garden (a.k.a. Rain Garden) was designed to complement artist Christie Beniston’s Topiaries sculpture, which, when placed in an urban setting, symbolizes the human drive to influence nature in all types of environments. Topiaries is one of several art installations on display throughout Pasadena as part of the Rotating Public Art Program, funded by Pasadena City Council in July 2010.
The Sponge Garden accompanying Topiaries is another manifestation of the human drive to influence nature. 25 Pasadena residents gathered first to learn about and then to implement the techniques of Conservation, Permeability, and Retention (from Surfrider Foundation’s principles of C.P.R.) and build a landscape that is friendly to people desiring a slice of nature as well as to nature herself. It is truly an Ocean Friendly Garden, despite being so far from the ocean.
Topiaries In Completed Garden
The new decomposed granite pathways wind through the garden, shaded by mature CA live oaks (Quercus agrifolia), which are nurturing a whole legion of smaller kin at their roots. Intersecting the pathways and seating areas is a dry creek bed, reminiscent of the nearby Arroyo Seco. No soil was removed from or imported to the site, so the contouring of the land was a result of excavating the paths and creek bed. Plants that thrive in the Pasadena climate, and are mostly native to the local ecosystem were placed atop berms comprised of the native silty loam (if they were dry-adapted) and within the creek bed (if they were comfortable with more water in winter). In the morning, residents learned how to figure out their grade change using a bunyip and how to determine their soil type and compaction profile. Although the turf already had been hand removed from the site, a demonstration of sheet mulching was conducted so everyone could envision how turf might be removed without chemicals.
After a delicious boxed lunch from Lovebirds Cafe, courtesy of Nancy Long at Pasadena Power & Water, the reinvigorated crew undertook to plant the more than 100 one gallon and four-inch container plants using the G3 Planting Technique of watering 5 times! That took a lot longer than everyone thought it would, but everything looked super perky when completed. After planting, a demonstration of installing on-line drip irrigation was conducted, and the site was thoroughly mulched 3″ – 4″ with natural woodchip mulch, courtesy of superwoman Karen Balchunas of Pasadena Public Works, and watered in.
G3′s Pamela Berstler conceived of the original site plan, which was taken by Pasadena Public Works Dept. and turned into the beautiful garden constructed during the HOW. Patrick Healy, Regional Manager of Merchants Landscape Services, Inc., a C-27 landscape contractor, installed the project and picked up any loose ends at the completion of the HOW. Now it’s up to Pasadena residents to add their personal experiences to the garden and enjoy it all year long. Read the City of Pasadena Website Article.
Tucson Circle Complete At Biosphere2
Posted on 05. Apr, 2012 by pamela in Environment 911, G3 Blog, G3 Community, Green Infrastructure, Rain Gardens, Watershed Notes
Biosphere2 Rises In The Desert
A whirlwind week of exploring Biosphere1′s Green Infrastructure and Low Impact Design (LID) throughout Tucson, Arizona brings itself to a conclusion with a journey to the desert home of Biosphere2. Biosphere2 is an Earth systems science research facility owned by the University of Arizona. Its current mission is to serve as a center for research, outreach, teaching and life-long learning about Earth (Biosphere1), its living systems, and its place in the universe.
Cisterns Capture Rainwater
The grounds are landscaped to capture rain water passively in the landscape and actively in cisterns. An experiment with twenty or more mini-greenroofs explores the best growing conditions for living roofs in arid environments.
Passive Capture In Landscape
Biospherians (yes, that’s what they call people who lived in the Biosphere) inhabited the enormous enclosed structure from 1991 to 1993 and then again for six months in 1994. Intervention into the two-year living experiment came when oxygen levels dropped precipitously and Biospherians found they could not cultivate sufficient calories to sustain the more than 65 hours of work each week required to maintain life within the enclosure. While it is no longer inhabited, the enormous (two and a half football fields under glass) structure is now used by the University of Arizona as a collective research facility, and interesting experiments in Earth-sciences are constantly underway. TreePeople’s Edith de Guzman and her husband Jolly joined G3′s Pamela Berstler and Surfrider’s Paul Herzog for a two-hour tour of the facility. Nearly twenty years have passed since the original Biospherians were locked inside, and the various biomes have grown significantly.
Rise Above Plastics Research
In the more than 600,000 gallon “ocean” an experiment is being conducted on the rate of plastic decomposition. Another experiment is growing Arizona desert native plants in different controlled environments to determine the effects of climate change on desert flora.
Climate Change Experiment
Compared with The Eden Project in Cornwall, England, Biosphere2 seems a bit too “engineered” and sterile. But the research conducted within this controlled environment undoubtedly will contribute to a better understanding our fragile, blue world — and that makes it one of the great wonders of our time.
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…
