Garden Tools: A Resource for Building Community

Sep 5, 2019

By Nicole Newell, Sustainable Landscaping Program Manager

One of the things we love to see in the neighborhoods where we have projects and programs are our community partners each contributing their own efforts to strengthen and grow these communities.

And when there are ways we can support other organizations with goals that complement ours toward building a just, equitable and sustainable environment, we are happy for the opportunity to do so. One such opportunity arose this summer.

Richard Fisher serves on the Vallejo Commission for the Future and Sustainable Solano’s Resilient Neighborhoods Advisory Board. He contacted us about a beautification project that he has spearheaded on the corner of Curtola Parkway and Solano Avenue. This corner has become a dumping ground for trash, furniture and other items, which gives a poor first impression of Vallejo.

Faith Food Fridays is located on this corner and provides an important service to the Vallejo community. The organization supplies food, clothes, household supplies and so much more to families in need. Beautifying this area would create a significant positive impact by giving a new face to Vallejo for people driving into the city and for the hundreds of families that visit Faith Food Fridays.

The vision of this project is to create an open-air art gallery and native plant garden to tell a positive story about the culture and love of the Vallejo community. The first part of the project was to clean up the corner and begin to rehab the soil by adding mulch. That’s where we were able to help.

Generous funding from the Solano County Water Agency and PG&E has allowed us to purchase garden tools used in various workshops and installations. When we are not using them for our own projects, rather than have those tools sit unused, we’re happy to offer them to community organizations as a resource.

Richard approached us about borrowing the tools for this beautification project so a large group of volunteers could get the work done in less time with more tools available. Angel’s Tree Care dropped off a load of free wood chips, and volunteers showed up with energy to clean up the corner and spread wood chips. The next step for the corner is still in the planning stages. Anyone from the community that has ideas or is willing to donate art, please contact Richard Fisher at: vallejocommissionforthefuture@gmail.com

As we enter into our busy season of landscaping projects and planting gardens, our tools will go back into regular use for our projects. But we still want to be a resource for community projects when those tools aren’t in use. If you are part of a community organization planning a project that needs garden tools, check with us for availability!

Dixon, Rio Vista Residents: Know the Perfect Spot for a Sustainable Garden?

Jul 24, 2019

By Sustainable Solano

Our Sustainable Backyards program has brought together communities around the county by creating waterwise, edible food forest gardens. These vibrant gardens have drawn in attendees from around the Bay Area for our annual tours as they seek out ideas for their own yards. Now, we want to hear from residents in Rio Vista and Dixon about your interest in bringing this program to your neighborhoods.

During the month of August, we will be assessing interest in food forest gardens at public and private sites where the creation of these gardens serves as hands-on educational workshops for local residents. Community members attend workshops that involve digging swales, spreading mulch, installing laundry-to-landscape greywater systems, and planting shade and fruit trees and surrounding guilds of plants that work together to create a healthy, vibrant garden. These workshops help participants gain the skills and knowledge needed to bring these ideas back to their own gardens and neighborhoods.

Do you know of a private or public site in Rio Vista or Dixon that would be perfect for sustainable landscaping and a food forest garden? Fill out our online Sustainable Landscaping Interest Form!


The Solano Sustainable Backyards program is made possible through the generous support of the Solano County Water Agency.

Learn How to Create a Food Forest Garden as Part of Vallejo’s First Resilient Neighborhood

Jun 11, 2019

By Sustainable Solano

Sustainable Solano and dozens of community members have been hard at work in the past few weeks creating the first Resilient Neighborhood in Vallejo through the new Resilient Neighborhoods pilot project.

Already, homeowners, neighbors and community members have come together to turn a water-hungry lawn into a water-wise front yard, dig water-grabbing swales to capture roof water and rainwater, and plant trees to offer shade and fruit and other beneficial plants. Projects have also included features such as a hugelkultur, which creates a raised garden bed using wood yard waste, and an herb spiral that creates microclimates for different herbs to grow.

Anyone interested in learning how to do these things hands-on will have another opportunity starting this weekend as volunteers take on the fourth home in this pilot project.

Come and see what it takes to transform a barren yard into a food forest garden oasis and bring these ideas back to your own home!

The free, educational workshops start at 9 a.m. and are scheduled until 4 p.m., though participants who can only give an hour or two are also encouraged to stop in. Lunch will be provided.

Here are the activities planned for the coming weekends (click the links for more details and to register for the free workshops):

There will also be a small celebration on June 29 to recognize all of the work that has been done to build this Resilient Neighborhood, ending the workday with a frozen treat for participants.

The workshops at this home are funded through the Solano County Water Agency. The Resilient Neighborhoods program is funded through the PG&E Corporation Foundation.

Celebrating Sustainable Landscape Designer Kathleen Huffman

May 28, 2019

By Sustainable Solano

Kathleen (center) watches the video tribute to her work

It was a bittersweet farewell for our sustainable landscape designer Kathleen Huffman last week as she finished her last food forest project for Sustainable Solano and prepared to move home to Oklahoma. Since first joining forces with Sustainable Solano four years ago, Kathleen has worked to shape and grow our sustainable landscaping efforts, building gardens and friendships along the way.

Videographer David Avery created this touching tribute video to Kathleen’s work and the mission that drives her.

Kathleen Huffman- The Repurposed Okie from David Avery on Vimeo.

Kathleen will be moving to take care of family, but also to bring her skills and knowledge to her 10-acre family farm, where she will showcase sustainability and permaculture. We look forward to seeing how she continues to share her insight with others and spread the seeds of more sustainable living.

In the coming weeks, we’ll share with you about the designers who are stepping in to help us with our future projects as we continue to grow our work on the strong foundation Kathleen leaves behind.

Join Us in Creating Our First Resilient Neighborhood in Vallejo!

Apr 29, 2019

By Kassie Munro, Resilient Neighborhoods Program Manager

Do you want to be a part of a pioneering new effort in Vallejo, and learn how we can make our neighborhoods more resilient?  

Join us Saturdays May 25 through June 22!

Our first pilot Resilient Neighborhoods team has been selected, the design process is underway, and we are excited to begin scheduling our educational installation days in the coming weeks.  For the first time, we will be working with a team of four homeowners to begin transforming their street into an environmentally and socially resilient community hub. Using landscaping elements of our Sustainable Backyard program as a foundation, this new program will build in additional resiliency elements focused on temperature regulation, restoring ecosystem functions to the urban environment and strengthening community networks. The design will treat the homes as part of the same ecosystem, linking them together through shared services and planned diversity, like providing shade in communal areas and producing a varied supply of food. Over time, we plan to work with this established team to bring additional neighbors and community organizations into the hub as part of a larger movement to transform our cities into more regenerative, equitable and resilient places to live.  

Working with four unique homes simultaneously provides a new opportunity for us to showcase how permaculture techniques can be applied to a variety of landscapes to enhance climate and social resilience.  Permaculture is an adaptive approach and methodology, and the diversity of our homes in this pilot will allow us to demonstrate how the same core principles can be applied to a variety of homes to achieve outcomes that are tailored to the individual members of the Resilient Hub, and the team as a whole. This pilot is an opportunity for us to expand our demonstration gardens not only in scale, but in scope.

Join us as we explore:

Heat Mitigation and Biomimicry

The urban heat island effect is a challenging consequence of our changing climate, felt most dramatically in urban areas with extensive paved surfaces and little vegetation.  We will be exploring how to use shade trees and structures to help keep our homes and outdoor spaces cooler in times of extreme heat, as well as the impact that evapotranspiration from greenery has in helping to cool the air.  Our partner Richard Fisher will also be working with us to pilot innovative biomimicry techniques throughout these installations that explore additional ways to help mitigate temperature extremes, as well as restoring other valuable ecosystem services back to our built environment. Biomimicry is guided by and aims to mimic Mother Earth’s methods for providing important ecosystem functions. For example, an old tree log can be used to capture, store and cycle water in a yard, similar to the role it would play in a forest setting.  You can read more about biomimicry and Richard’s approach here.

 

Integrating Permaculture into Existing Landscape Features

Creating a dramatic transformation from water-hogging lawn to lush, water-wise edible foodscape is a powerful and compelling demonstration.  But for many of us, our yard isn’t a blank canvas and the thought of needing to strip things down to a clean slate to transition to a permaculture landscape can be daunting.  Through these installations, we will be highlighting how to work within your existing landscape features, both hardscape and established plants, to integrate permaculture techniques and begin the transition to a more sustainable, regenerative and productive landscape.

 

California Native, Ultra-Low-Water Showcase

One of our Resilient Neighborhood homeowners is a passionate California native plant enthusiast.  We will be working with her to design a unique backyard landscape that will serve as a pollinator oasis and embrace California native and drought-tolerant plants.  Within this garden, we will also be building a bridge between native and permaculture-based designs by including soil building and water capture techniques like bioswales, and incorporating small amounts of food forestry through fruit tree guilds, berry bushes and edible perennial plants.

Along with these new features, we will be holding workshops on all of our foundational sustainable landscaping elements, including:

  • Roofwater capture
  • Bioswales
  • Edible landscaping
  • Laundry-to-Landscape greywater systems
  • Sheet mulching

Check our calendar for individual installation dates to register for upcoming workshops. By signing up for our newsletter, you can be sure you’re the first to hear when events are scheduled.

Register for the upcoming workshops at the links below:

June 1: Greywater and Lawn Conversion
June 8: Understory, Drip and Water-Capture Feature
June 15: Swales, Mulch, Trees, Hugelkultur
June 22: Laundry-to-Landscape Greywater Installation
June 29: Understory and Drip Irrigation

We hope to see you there!

The Resilient Neighborhoods program is funded through a grant from PG&E.

Work at one of the homes in the neighborhood is funded through a grant from the Solano County Water Agency.

Interested in Sustainable Landscaping and Community-Building? Tell Us!

Mar 1, 2019

By Sustainable Solano

Have you ever wondered how Sustainable Solano makes the connections that lead to our involvement in the community? Whether it is the planning and planting of a sustainable garden, the installation of a greywater system, urban forests to bring food and shade to residents or bringing local communities together around these sustainability efforts, the process to find sites can be a long one.

Now, you can help! We know that the best way to find the perfect site for a future project is through the people we meet. That’s why we’ve created a quick and easy form for Solano County residents to let us know how they want to get involved and help us identify where programs and projects are needed.

We want to hear your vision and look for opportunities that Sustainable Solano can support. We’ll use this information to identify which of our current programs best fit your interests, and it will give us insight as we expand our programs and help to shape future initiatives.

We are seeking both private residents and public sites to be part of our green infrastructure programs that take a restorative approach to our environment and include Sustainable Backyards, Solano Gardens and Urban Forests.

We’re also actively starting our search for the first Resilient Neighborhood site in Vallejo. Our vision for the Resilient Neighborhoods program is to unite neighbors to work collaboratively, with the support of the greater community, to install low-cost, low-tech sustainability elements that restore valuable services back to our built environment, like producing food, filtering air and cycling water. Let us know if you are interested in exploring this opportunity in your neighborhood — or let us know what other programs fit your interests.

Filling out the interest form is the first step. Become part of the conversation on sustainability and building community. We hope you’ll take a moment to fill out the form yourself and share it with neighbors and friends.

Download the form here and send your completed form to nicole@sustainablesolano.org

Or fill out our interactive online form here.