2022 Fairfield & Vacaville Demonstration Food Forest Tour: Featured Gardens
Scroll through the list below to read about the Fairfield and Vacaville gardens that are featured on this year’s Demonstration Food Forest Tour!
Gardens will be open from 9 am-1 pm Saturday, June 4. You can pick up your itinerary for this self-guided tour at a permaculture demonstration farm site in Vacaville from 9-11 am. And don’t miss these special additions:
- 11 am: Greywater talk and laundry-to-landscape greywater system tour with Greywater Action at Healthy Futures garden
- Greywater installer Andrea Lara will be on-site to give a talk on using your laundry water to irrigate your landscape and will give a tour of the laundry-to-landscape greywater system.
- 10 am-12 pm: Expert advice on chicken-keeping and food forest plant selection at Mangia garden
- Master Gardener Tina Saravia will be on-site to answer questions about backyard chickens and food forest garden plants that thrive in Solano County.
Magical Garden
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.
Home to hummingbirds, bees, ladybugs and other beneficial insects, the garden sparks conversation with the neighbors and offers bountiful produce to share.
Mom’s Delight
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.
Blooming Beneficial Biome
This food forest garden was a front yard lawn conversion and displays what can be accomplished in less than 18 months.
Building healthy soil and harvesting rainwater in an in-ground swale, the garden supports fruit trees, asparagus, pollinator plants and more.
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.
During the tour Andrea Lara from Greywater Action will give a talk at 11 am on greywater and tour the existing laundry-to-landscape system. There will be time for questions.
Vacaville’s Westgate Wonderland Neighborhood
(These next three gardens are within walking distance of each other)
Mangia
This three-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.
During the tour Master Gardener Tina Saravia will be on-site to answer questions about backyard chickens and food forest plants.
Our Shepherd’s Heart
This newly established 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.
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.
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.
A 2-year-old food forest and pollinator garden installed in 2020 that includes a swale that captures roof water and mediterranean trees and plants mixed with native pollinating and nectar plants to attract bees and butterflies. This site is home to a Monarch Waystation that grows a variety of plants to support Western Monarch Butterflies. 
A 7-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 2 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 
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. 
This garden was inspired through collaboration with Sustainable Solano. Vallejo Project youth leaders attended Sustainable Solano workshops and became an organizational partner. This is a newly established garden with the beginning of a food forest with fruiting trees, eight chickens, a worm bin and a compost system. Over the last six months the soil has been nourished with fava beans and other nitrogen-fixing plants and the garden has been a training ground for mulching. This garden is a Vallejo Project-supported venture to build youth resiliency and forge a relationship between transitional families and youth to sustain the community for years to come.
