Often times you find the solution within the problem. We couldn’t find one yard to fit all our educational needs of the demonstration food forest. So with the creative use of our limited funds we will be installing two! The Enchanted Cottage Garden is the perfect front yard location. This yard that is now grass will be sheet mulched and transformed into a food forest. The unique roof of this cottage style home will serve as a great educational opportunity to show how to retrofit gutters to harvest roof water.
The problem is that it can’t receive grey water.
The Ripple Effect which already has many components of a food forest, fruit trees, perennial vegetables, plants that attract the beneficial insects, rain water harvest, artistic/creative use of onsite materials in both the front and backyard. Grey water will be able to be used to water an already existing landscape! This is a great site to show how to add community of plants to support the trees that already exist in our yard!! We will also be installing one fruit tree guild here adding another opportunity to show roof water catchment.
Installation of The Enchanted Cottage Garden will begin on April 29th this day will be hands on learning about setting the basic foundation: swales, berms, roof water harvest, creative use of onsite materials. May 13th will be a day filled with learning about the food forest plants chosen. We will get to have conversations about plant communities working together to benefit each other. Water efficient, basic drip irrigation will also be installed that day. Sheet mulching will be done and the transformation of a lawn into a custom demonstration food forest will be revealed.
May 6th will be spent at The Ripple Effect. The public will get an opportunity to see what can be done with an already existing landscape. This will be a hands-on laundry to landscape grey water workshop. The grey water will be used to water a pre-existing landscape. As a community we will be learning to install one simple fruit tree guild and show diversion of roof water to a swale. We will also talk about what plants could be added to support the existing landscape.
All three days April 29, May 6, and May 13 will be filled with learning about sustainable landscapes through hands-on experience and include a lunch provided by the homeowners!!! Come learn how to save water, grow food and build community!! Registration is required.
It was a cool and sunny day for the Greyhawk Grove Tour, and perhaps it was that, or that our tour is gathering steam, that nearly 30 people squeezed into a room to listen to Lydia Neilsen from the Regenerative Design Institute. She started with a brief overview of permaculture design principles: people care, earth care–and then dove straight into practical, simple applications to one’s garden, covering hands-on details of creating swales (or as someone coined them, “Magical ditches”), appreciating weeds and the natural succession of plant life, and mimicking that healthy ecosystem balance in tree and plant guilds. She fielded questions about greywater, and, noting that several Food Forest Keepers were in attendance, had them field questions as well. Attendees remarked on on simple, clear, and practical her talk was.
The overflowing group then spilled out into the demonstration food forest itself, were Lydia pulled up a giant fava bean to show the group the roots and speak about cover crops, nitrogen fixation and soil health. She also ate a nodule, declaring it tasted like peanuts and offered it to anyone who wanted to try. They were able to see the laundry-to-landscape switch and pipes, look at the greywater basins, the rainwater pipes that flowed straight into the two swales, how the natural slope and chicken coop was incorporated into the planning, and snuggle up the free range chickens who were milling about. “We used to have one of these at the farm,” said the farm director of Loma Vista Farms after she cuddled up a polish chicken–known for a mop of feathers on top of its head that looks like punk-rocker hair. “We used to call it our Tina Turner chicken. But now the kids don’t get the reference. I guess rockstar chicken still works.”
It was a rockstar day all around. And we look forward to the next stop in the tour–stop #6, “The Curious Garden.”
For more information and to register for “The Curious Garden”, please go here.
Nicole Newell, Sustainable Landscaping Program Manager and a graduate of our Land Caretakers program.
Do you want to learn how to get involved with Sustainable Solano’s Sustainable Landscaping program?
This series of events is designed to prepare a group of volunteers to help implement Vallejo Sustainable Backyard program. If you are interested to become a part of this movement in Vallejo, please plan on attending one of the landscaping classes (link), a L2L hands-on workshop in Benicia and this training/ potluck at the house of Nicole and Jason. This training is mandatory for people applying for a food forest. We’ll offer another short series at the end of March.
From 5:30 to 8pm on March 3rd, Land Caretaker program graduates, Jason and Nicole, are hosting a volunteer training/potluck dinner where they will share the basics of sustainable landscaping, while showing attendees their own evolving food forest and laundry-to-landscape greywater system. Jason and Nicole are passionate about Sustainable Landscaping, and both were inspired to further their skills and knowledge following the Land Caretaker’s training. Jason has since completed greywater installation training with Greywater Action to learn how to maximize secondary water use, and Nicole completed Toby Hemenway’s permaculture design course to acquire her Permaculture Design Certificate. They are excited to share their sustainable landscaping knowledge, and prepare interested volunteers and food forest keepers for the upcoming installations in Vallejo.
Jason and Nicole will provide vegetarian and hatch green chili pork taco’s, and request that attendees bring a side dish. It will be a fun opportunity to learn about sustainable landscaping, eat some delicious food, and meet people from your community. Please email Nicole if you are interested so she and Jason can plan to comfortably host everyone.
Do you own your home in Vallejo? Are you interested in living a more sustainable life? We are inviting you to consider becoming a demonstration food forest keeper! With the help of the community, we’ll convert your lawn, if applicable, and install a permaculture food forest and a laundry-to- landscape greywater system that will feed all the trees and bushes in your new garden!
Why permaculture food forest?
A 2,000 sq. ft.-lawn requires about 90,000 gallons of water a year. A mature 2,000 sq. ft. food forest needs about 20,000 gallons of water per year and not all of this water needs to come from the municipal source. Of this amount of water, our goal is to utilize as much free (rain) and secondary water. Rain water from your roof and greywater from your laundry will be diverted to the specially prepared mulch basins and swales in your garden – a system of ditches filled with mulch that will slow down and absorb into the soil every drop of water finding its way to your garden.
In Benicia, we have already transformed seven yards from lawns into luscious, thriving food forests utilizing secondary water (rainwater and greywater). You can come meet the team and tour three of these gardens on February 25, March 25 and April 22! Visit our events calendar to register.
Sustainable Solano is beginning the next stage of our Sustainable Backyard Program. We are now expanding into Vallejo.
What we will do
Imagine a thriving, vibrant eco-system in your front-or backyard! A few fruit trees surrounded by native and Mediterranean plants, berries, perennial vegetables, flowers, with enough space for your annual favorites.
Birds, Bees and Beyond, one of the original Benicia Sustainable Backyard Demonstration Food Forest Installations, Winter 2016
The installation of this demonstration food forest is sponsored by the Solano County Water Agency and is free to Vallejo homeowners. Your new garden will become a community educational center! Your responsibility will be to maintain the food forest (a list of sustainable landscapers in your area will be provided, if you need extra help), to enjoy plentiful harvest, and participate in future annual tours of Sustainable Solano landscapes.
Application Process
The application process starts on February 20, 2017 and goes until March 27, 2017. The installation will happen on three Saturdays in April-May. The homeowner must be available for these dates: April 22, 29, May 6, 13. At least one of the homeowners is required to attend the volunteer training. While we are particularly interested in highly visible front-yard lawns to convert, other types of landscape (up to 2,000 sq.ft.) are welcome to participate. We will visit all the applying households to evaluate their suitability for a permaculture food forest and a laundry-to- landscape greywater system.
Sustainable Solano Board and the Permaculture Advisory Board will make the final selection based on the proposed sites’ characteristics.
David Shaw of Santa Cruz Permaculture’s talk and tour turned into an extended one when the official event ended. Due to enthusiasm the talk portion ran long and the tour ran out of time. Attendees still had many questions, so David graciously agreed to travel directly to the Community Orchard where he continued answering pruning-related questions. As one participant noted, “That was so killer. I think I’ll be taking David’s permaculture course.”
What he was referring to was David’s quick overview of permaculture principles. What was an hour talk with handouts quickly blossomed into a nearly 2-hour one, complete with poetry recitation, and an explanation of how permaculture was similar and different to academic-based agro-ecology (he teaches at UC Santa Cruz in agro-ecology as well), and Q&A. There were over two dozen attendees, with several steadily streaming in after the talk began, and space became so limited that attendees joked about huddling together on the “huddle corner” of the living room couch, attendees sat on the floor and on pillows, and many stood.
The tour portion of the day commenced with only 15 minutes left, but the hosts Kirsten and Nick were amenable, and curious to learn about pruning their lovely fruit trees, so they extended the tour by half an hour. Yet even running half an hour over, attendees were delighted when David agreed to continue the talk at the Community Orchard and expressed his wish to stay for lunch and see more of the town.
Permaculture isn’t just about plants and trees, the self-proclaimed tree nerd and orchardist said, it is about community, resilience, and re-energizing. When someone asked why he didn’t use the word sustainability, he countered with a brief anecdote: “Well, look, if someone asks you about your marriage, would you want to say, ‘It’s sustainable’ or would you want to say, ‘It’s renewing and re-generative?'” And it seemed that many of the people who attended the even found it very much so.
Please note: For those still interested in a more in-depth workshop on pruning, the Community Orchards is hosting Ann Ralph of Grow a Little Fruit Tree on February 11th. The workshop is free from orchard members, $40 for non-members. There is a 20 person limit. More information and registration can be found here.
Our next stop is February 25th, at “Greyhawk Grove”, another one of our original installation food forests, with Lydia Neilson of the Regenerative Institute. The event is FREE, but you must pre-register for the location. More information can be found here.
Sustainable Solano would like to share a video that a friend, Kristian, made! It certainly highlights the most meaningful moments and makes us reflect on how moving of an experience this was for us.
