On Relationship with the Natural World
By Manpreet Singh, Public Education Coordinator Fellow
“Inspiring.” That was the most frequent word from participants who joined Sustainable Solano’s 10th annual Benicia & Vallejo Demonstration Food Forest Garden Tour. Having the opportunity to see how lively and full each garden was, I found it no surprise that participants took inspiration from these sites and each gardener’s stories. The creation of Enchanted Cottage Garden, for example, was a family affair with each member actively involved from setting the foundation to naming the garden. Hearing from landscape architects and homeowners at the Habitat and Harvest Garden provided insights into how the garden was created; interacting with docents and land stewards at Yggdrasil Garden provided real-life examples of permaculture and pollinator havens.
With 16 locations scattered across both cities, participants met with passionate local gardeners and explored real life examples of flourishing food forests, community gardens, and native plant gardens that nourish humans, pollinators, and the Earth. Additionally, participants learned about permaculture, native planting, and water conservation, providing them with practical knowledge that can help them transform their own gardens and the way they interact with the environment. The annual Garden Tour provides real life examples of how humans and land can coexist and take care of each other.
Sustainable Solano is actively looking for a site in Vallejo to do a front lawn conversion into a demonstration food forest.
Habitat & Harvest, a California Native Plant Society garden on this year’s tour
Our relationship with the land is important because we depend on it for life-sustaining resources such as food and shelter, and it forms the foundation of our identity through influencing history, culture and traditions. Humanity and land are intertwined in a loop where our activities and interaction influence what the land will share with us and can alter earth systems that shape our climate and how society itself functions. Humans and land are connected and interdependent with each other, and we need to work towards a regenerative relationship with the land that helps us protect and sustain it for future generations.
Throughout human history, humans have reshaped the environment to sustain themselves. This is often done through two pathways: exploitative and regenerative. The exploitative pathway is the most prevalent in which natural resources are extracted through unsustainable methods that remove green spaces and degrade soil quality. Action such as deforestation, large scale monocultures, intensive tilling, and pesticide use can negatively impact soil nutrients, lead to a loss biodiversity, contaminate water, harm production of fresh produce, and lower the capacity of Earth to absorb carbon dioxide, thus accelerating global warming, impacting air quality, and exacerbating weather events linked to climate change. Exploiting land is unsustainable and can significantly reduce what we leave for future generations.
The alternative and more sustainable method is the regenerative pathway where humans partner with the natural land and its cycles and take actions that heal the environment. This can include supporting healthy soil to sequester carbon, increase water retention and boost soil life; using elements of companion planting where plants support one another and the wider ecosystem, such as attraction of pollinators and protection from pests; and composting to reduce waste and methane pollution. These types of actions were on display during the Garden Tour, showing how people are taking care of the land and in turn the land provides us with fresh fruits and vegetables, serves as a home for us and other animals, and further carries our history into the future.
The regenerative pathway is often practiced through environmental stewardship where actions by individuals or groups are taken to protect, responsibly use, and care for the environment. These actions can happen at any scale and can include creating community gardens, replanting trees, using native plants, limiting harvest, or purchasing more sustainable products. Indigenous communities are the greatest examples of environmental stewards with a “kincentric worldview” in which people are part of and share a genealogical connection with nature. These communities view the natural world (land and sea) as being alive and that caring for the world is a reciprocal relationship where the natural world is both a caregiver and care-receiver — echoing the intertwined relationship between human and land.
Yggdrasil Garden in Benicia
Loma Vista Farm in Vallejo
As climate change worsens and impacts all living things, the need to promote improved human-environment interactions through stewardship is ever pressing. During the Garden Tour, there were many examples of environmental stewardship. One key example is the practice of permaculture in which we design our life and environment around processes and systems found in nature to create ecologically and socially sustainable ways of living. Permaculture reflects the key principle that all elements found in nature are connected on many scales. For example, native plants draw in pollinators (e.g., butterflies, bees) who help nourish the plants that provide us with shade and fresh produce, and in turn the plants provide nutrition and nesting sites that help the pollinators survive and reproduce. Yggdrasil Garden and Loma Vista Farm are real life examples of permaculture that embrace the 3 ethics of permaculture — Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share. These guide us in how we can live regeneratively while protecting the planet and meeting current and future generational needs in an equitable manner to protect resources.
The relationship between humans and land is critical and deeply interwoven as the land forms the basis of who we were, are, and will be. As we continue to shape the natural world, becoming environmental stewards and taking actions through sustainable landscaping and creating food forests are vital in creating a resilient, regenerative interdependent relationship where we take care of the land and the land continues to take care of us as future generations grow.
This piece recognizes that Solano County has been home of the Suisune, the Patwin of the Wintun tribes, Miwuk, Karkin Ohlone, Yoche Dehe, and the countless other California tribes who have remained committed to the stewardship of this land over many centuries. As we continue shaping our environment, we are reminded to honor and look to the relationship indigenous communities have maintained with the natural world since time immemorial. We encourage those of you reading this blog to learn more about the Native tribes where you live and seek active ways to acknowledge and give back.
The spring garden tour will begin at 9 am at Avant Community Garden in Benicia with a talk on healthy soil from “CompostGal” Lori Caldwell. Itinerary pick up will be from 9-11 am.
An evolving food forest garden and greywater system installed as part of Sustainable Solano’s 2022-23 Permaculture Design Certificate course. Students transformed the front yard with a rain-capturing swale and planted berms with native and pollinator-supporting plants. The west side yard’s passionfruit vines and fruit tree guilds are watered by a laundry-to-landscape greywater system. The monarch butterfly-hosting back gardens were designed by Soilogical, nurtured with specially prepared compost, and supported by a Water Service Irrigation design created as part of a Sustainable Solano irrigation class. The site’s current steward, Heath Griffith of Grow with the Flow, cultivates edible landscapes with flowers and medicinal herbs, with an eye towards community engagement and ecological justice. An herb spiral was created with bricks repurposed from the chimney of the circa 1850s historic home, retaining walls were built from pieces of historic on-site stables, and patios were made from slate and brick on-site. The east side yard (in development) is watered with both a rain-capturing swale and a laundry-to-landscape system. Displays feature the historic aspects of the home; its background and ongoing tradition of art, design, and healing; information about the Ohlone Sogorea Te Indigenous Land Trust and rematriation of Carquin land; and various permaculture systems and landscape elements.
Visit this native plant garden and see what 30+ years of gardening dedication to native plants can create. Welcoming shade plants and green grasses abound under thriving and tall buckeye and big leaf maple trees that gain water from harvested roof rain flowing to a dry creek bed. A mature manzanita row lines the side yard walkway. Feel the intimate wildlife habitat backyard space as you find small birds flying between the branches of tall native shrubs such as the fragrant mock orange, red-blooming spice bush and the heart-shaped leaves of the western redbud. Sun-loving native perennials border a native grass lawn, and alum root hugs the shade of the understory. The owners are grateful for the relaxed and comfortable habitat that native plants provide for them.
The view of this welcoming tiered front garden begins right at street level with sidewalk appeal of a chaparral-inspired garden including evergreen manzanita, easy-to-grow buckwheat, and native grasses. Step down to the next tier to find a cozy deck space to sit within the garden and share the space with emerging caterpillars, hummingbirds and native pollinators as the seasons unfold. Tiered terraces and integrated drainage allow for meadow and sage, milkweed, and strawberry groundcover plantings to absorb stormwater while supporting plant health. View coffeeberry, monkeyflower, penstemon, and salvia which attract and support additional wildlife in this habitat-rich garden. Mature fruit trees, perennial edibles and vegetable beds combine with the abundance of native plantings for a harmonious full habitat that supports biodiversity and spills into the back yard as well. This garden family truly feels a calm connection with nature when they are in their garden space.
Come and visit this wild-like garden to gaze upon the beautiful annual flowering natives such as the yellow and white tidy tips and the purples of lupine in the front garden patch. Travel through the side yard of orange California poppies, stepping rounds and a dry creek bed that collects rainwater, to the large backyard garden that flourishes with a thriving tapestry of wildlife-supporting native plants. Verdant grasses and spring ephemerals surround a bird bath that California Towhees are happy to visit. Tall shrubs such as rosa californica or the keystone tree coast live oak have become safe places for nests of breeding small birds. Flowering colorful annuals are servicing the many pollinators such as hover flies and bumblebees that visit the flowers for pollen. This habitat refuge is where the family connects with the wonders of nature. The owner collects seeds of many native plant species to continue the annual flowering habitat year after year.
Loma Vista Farm is a program of the Vallejo City Unified School District in partnership with the Friends of Loma Vista Farm, a community-based nonprofit organization.
Food forest garden and greywater system installed as part of Sustainable Solano’s 2021 
An evolving food forest garden and greywater system installed as part of Sustainable Solano’s 2022-23 
Morningside Botanical Bounty food forest was created as part of the 
We are incredibly grateful for the generous support of our funders. Magic Cabinet is supporting this year’s tour through its sponsorship.