2023 Vacaville Demonstration Food Forest Tour: Featured Gardens
Scroll through the list below to read about the Vacaville gardens that are featured on this year’s Demonstration Food Forest Tour!
Gardens will be open from 10 am-1 pm Saturday, June 3. You can pick up your itinerary for this self-guided tour at the Vacaville Farmers Market from 9-11 am.
Blooming Beneficial Biome
This Food Forest Keeper was inspired to transform her lawn into a garden full of healthy soil with microbial diversity, having installed a swale and berm and started the transformation when SuSol selected the site for a demonstration food forest. The garden thrives with a diversity of plants that support one another and manure, worm castings and compost inoculation to nurture the soil, without additional amendments and inputs.
Plants share nutrients courtesy of the underworld super highway delivery system of microorganisms and mycorrhizal fungi. Plants feed microorganisms excess simple sugars in this interdependent environment, who then co-labor to source and deliver what each plant requires. Each row has a diversity of vegetables and beneficials that serve to confuse bugs and disease. It should not be necessary to adopt a rigid practice of crop rotation with this integrated method of planting.
See amaranth, asparagus, beets, blueberries, bok choy, broccoli, carrots, cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi, lettuce, parsnips, Swiss chard, spinach, strawberries, peach, apple, pear, cherry, nectaplum, apple, microclover, blooming beneficials and more on less than a tenth of an acre. The Food Forest Keeper has before and after posters and a reference binder of almost every plant.
Healthy Futures
This garden has eight thriving fruit trees in a small front yard, as well as a plethora of herbaceous and shrub plants. The vegetation is watered through a combination of swales that collect rainwater, greywater from the laundry, and (rarely utilized) drip irrigation. The yard has, like any good forest should, taken on a life and energy of its own, constantly changing and morphing year over year, but never failing to provide the residents, neighbors, and several local food banks with fruits and vegetables.
Vacaville’s Westgate Wonderland Neighborhood
(These next three gardens are within walking distance of each other)
Mangía
This four-year-old front yard garden welcomes the neighborhood to pick as they please. The yard extends to the backyard with pollinator plants intermixed with edibles, chickens, repurposed items, a native sedge field and so much more. This yard integrates systems to benefit the whole property.
Our Shepherd’s Heart
This front yard garden was installed in May 2021 with the focus on growing food and a desire to share with neighbors. A large swale in the front wraps around the yard and supports fruit trees and pollinators.
Orchid Lily
This small, beautiful, low maintenance front yard garden offers easy access to culinary herbs and three fruit tree guilds supported with yarrow, comfrey and borage.
Inspired Garden
Homeowners Mike and Sherry participated in SuSol’s DIY Sustainable Design course after working with SuSol to create a demonstration food forest garden and laundry-to-landscape greywater system at the family home that has housed four generations (Healthy Futures, also on this year’s tour). With that inspriation and guidance, Mike and Sherry now have converted their front and back yards, turning lawn into an edible garden filled with pollinator plants that includes swales to capture rainwater, an herb spiral, espalied apple and pear trees and drip irrigation. The garden now yields enough fruit and vegetables to share with neighbors.
Tour their yard to see how you can apply these principles at home!
We are incredibly grateful for the generous support of our funders. The Solano County Water Agency continues to support the Sustainable Backyard Program throughout the county. Solano Sustainable Backyard Program short videos: Waterwise and Building Gardens and Community. Occasionally we combine funding from other programs to make larger projects possible.
This garden was a front lawn conversion in 2019. It is filled with vegetables, fruits, herbs and more, building healthy soil and harvesting water from the roof.
Installed in 2017, this backyard food forest has 21 fruit trees pruned annually to 5 feet, making it easier to access the fruit. The majority of the trees are watered by rain funneled into a swale, while others are watered from the laundry-to-landscape greywater system. An automatic drip system is used during the dry periods. All the fruits are shared with neighbors, friends and family. Additional plantings of salvia and calendula draw in honey bees and hummingbirds.
This garden was just planted in January 2023 as a collaborative project between Sustainable Solano and Solano 4-H. Youth members learned about permaculture and designing within the homeowners’ needs, then applied their new knowledge to a plan that includes fruit trees, pollinators and edible annuals. This site is especially susceptible to the western winds, which have annual summer gusts up to 40 mph. The garden is a work in progress as a learning space for 4-Hers for years to come.
This garden is a demonstration in community and environmental resilience. Homeowners Heidi and Mitch had dealt with a wildfire taking their home in 2020. The garden was designed around a large maple tree, the only thing that survived the fire, and was named in Gaelic to harken back to Mitch’s native Scottish roots. It was installed December 2022.
Installed in 2021 to mitigate the effects of flooding, this food forest garden is complete with chickens and a laundry-to-landscape greywater system. This yard has multiple fruit trees and pollinator plants.
Mature front yard food forest has mostly fruit trees and native plants that attract pollinators year-round. It has a laundry-to-landscape greywater system.
An 8-year-old established food forest with two swales that are dug out and refreshed every 2-3 years, laundry-to-landscape greywater to fruit trees, and chickens. The drip irrigation system was removed three years ago and the garden is thriving! Annual beds are hand-watered once a week during the growing season. Greyhawk Grove is a “high-traffic-survival-of-the-fittest-have-three-young-children garden”. There may be lemonade and baked goods for sale by children, as well as products from the garden to give away (dried calendula, lavender, herbs, eggs, fruit, etc.).
Food forest garden and greywater system installed as part of Sustainable Solano’s 2021 
Southern slope food forest focused on pollinators, shrubs and native plants. It also includes fruit trees, perennial and edible plants, swales and a laundry-to-landscape greywater system.
A new and evolving food forest garden and greywater system installed as part of Sustainable Solano’s 2022-23 
This homeowner attended our tours and was inspired to transform his yard! This brand new garden, designed by Michael Wedgley, is a unique opportunity to tour a stunning and sustainable backyard that showcases the beauty and abundance of permaculture. This eco-conscious backyard features a rainwater catchment system that can harvest up to 3,500 gallons per year, helping to restore the on-site water table, and providing an abundant source of water for this permaculture food forest.
Two separate gardens, one is a peace garden with mostly flowers, cactus and trees and the other is the vegetable garden, called Johnson Ranch. The vegetable garden was revived through the 
Morningside Botanical Bounty food forest was created as part of the 
Pollinator food forest garden filled with a variety of California native plants that support the habitat of butterflies, bees, moths, wasps, hummingbirds and so much more. This garden was just installed in February 2023 as a collaboration with a variety of organizations including Vallejo People’s Garden, Vallejo Project, Solano Resource Conservation District and Monarch Milkweed Project. Alanna Mirror wrote three songs inspired by the installation, featured in her 
Vallejo Project’s Unity Garden initiative restored an abandoned lot that was once filled with sand and garbage and turned it into a multi-level food forest with internationally influenced farming techniques and 10 chickens. This garden is focused on urban agriculture.
