2023 Fairfield & Suisun City Demonstration Food Forest Garden Tour & Healthy Local Food Showcase is May 6!

Apr 28, 2023

Join us for the Fairfield-Suisun City Demonstration Food Forest Tour and Celebrating Healthy Local Food: A Culinary and Garden Showcase on Saturday, May 6!

Sustainable Solano’s self-guided tour of vibrant, waterwise gardens in Fairfield and Suisun City will start with check-in from 9-11 am at Jardin de Esperanza, the garden on Armijo High School’s campus. Park and follow the signs to the garden, where you will be able to sign in and receive an itinerary of gardens to visit. Then tour Jardin de Esperanza and visit the Showcase in the Armijo High School library before heading out to tour the other gardens between 10 am-1 pm!

The tour highlights private and community gardens that use sustainable, waterwise practices to create spaces that provide food, habitat and beauty while capturing rainwater and, in some cases, reusing laundry water in the landscape. Some gardens also show how to make chickens part of a backyard ecosystem. Register here.

In the Showcase, students who participated in the Armijo Healthy Local Food program will share multimedia projects that highlight the importance of growing, cooking and eating healthy food and the importance of local food. Students in the Healthy Local Food program spent weeks learning about the importance of healthy, seasonal, local food by learning culinary skills and how to cook with local produce and meeting in the school garden to connect with growing and understanding our relationship to food. They used their experiences to create multimedia campaigns that include videos, interviews, podcasts, blogs and more!

Explore the multimedia campaigns at your own pace while talking with the students about their work and the program.

We hope to see you there!

Scroll through the list below to read about the Fairfield and Suisun City gardens that are featured on this year’s Demonstration Food Forest Tour!

Gardens will be open from 10 am-1 pm Saturday, May 6. You can pick up your itinerary for this self-guided tour at the Armijo High School “Jardin de Esperanza” from 9-11 am.

Register for the tour here!

Fairfield Demonstration Food Forest Gardens

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.

Learn more

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.

Laundry-to-Landscape greywater & backyard chickens

Learn more

West Winds

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.

Backyard chickens

Learn more

Suisun City Demonstration Food Forest Gardens

Caisteal Termonn

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.

Learn more

El Bosquecito

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.

Laundry-to-Landscape greywater & backyard chickens

 

Learn more

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.

Armijo High’s garden is supported through our Solano Gardens program and by Innovative Health Solutions. 

The Healthy Local Food Program is run through Sustainable Solano, with funding from Solano Public Health and a CA Department of Food and Agriculture grant. Innovative Health Solutions is also a partner that supports the program and receives funding through the CalFresh Healthy Living Program administered through the Nutrition Services Bureau of Solano Public Health. The program is in partnership with Armijo High School and the school’s Multimedia Academy and Garden Club.

2022 Fairfield & Vacaville Demonstration Food Forest Tour: Featured Gardens

May 13, 2022

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.

Register for the June 4 tour here!

Fairfield Demonstration Food Forest Gardens

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.

Learn more

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.

Learn more

Vacaville Demonstration Food Forest Gardens

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.

Learn 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.

Learn more

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.

Learn more

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.

Learn more

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.

Learn more

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.

2022 Benicia & Vallejo Demonstration Food Forest Tour is April 23!

Apr 1, 2022

By Nicole Newell, Sustainable Landscaping Program Manager

We will be opening up our demonstration food forest gardens in Benicia and Vallejo for the annual tour on April 23, and are thrilled to be back with our regular tour! Learn about this year’s gardens here.

Each garden is a unique expression of the homeowner and the land and was designed using permaculture principles. These gardens offer ideas and inspiration on how to use water efficiently while creating a lush thriving garden that supports life and provides food and habitat. During this pandemic, the food forest keepers have been doing really cool things to serve the Solano County community. This year some of the garden sites will have information on what they have been up to for the past two years: bees, honey, Monarch butterflies, Food is Free stands, native plants, local food and so much more. All of the gardens will showcase plants that thrive in Solano County!

When you pick up your full-day itinerary at Avant Garden in Benicia, you’ll have an opportunity to hear a talk on soil biology and soil health at 9 am. Want to join us for just the afternoon touring Vallejo sites? You can pick up your itinerary from noon-1 pm at St. Patrick-St. Vincent Catholic High School in Vallejo and have an opportunity to learn about what’s going on in local food. Find more details below!

For the past two years we were challenged to get creative with garden tours. We created a few video tours the first year of the pandemic that expanded our educational video library but couldn’t convey the full vision of what it’s like to stand inside these gardens. Last year the gardens were open to private tours.

Over the past two years I have missed seeing people smile and the magic that unfolds when people gather. We thrive when we are connected. Our deepest hope for this year’s tour is that people get energized and inspired to take action and become caretakers of the land and each other.

We look forward to seeing you this year as we return to a full tour, but with some changes that should add to your experience. Read below to find out more about the day’s events and what to expect in each garden so you can plan out your day!

Register here

This program is made possible by the generous support from the Solano County Water Agency.

Plan Your Day

Learn about each garden you can visit here

How It Will Work

You can choose to tour for the whole day or for half a day.
Learn about the gardens here
Benicia Demonstration Food Forest Gardens will be open 10 am-1 pm
Vallejo Demonstration Food Forest Gardens will be open 1-4 pm

Register here

Itinerary pickup and special events:

9-11 am: Itineraries will be available at Avant Garden in Benicia (400 First St.). This itinerary will include all of the demonstration food forest gardens in Benicia (open in the morning) and Vallejo (open in the afternoon).

9 am: Sustainable Solano Program Manager Michael Wedgley will give a talk at Avant Garden on how to have garden abundance with healthy soil biology, including the creation of compost extracts and teas to add soil biology where it’s needed. He will then apply compost extract to the community shared plot at the garden, which grows food for donation. ***Bring a mason jar and get some compost extract while supplies last.

12-1 pm: Itineraries for the Vallejo garden sites (open in the afternoon) will be available at St. Patrick-St. Vincent Catholic High School (1500 Benicia Rd., Vallejo)

12 pm: Learn about Sustainable Solano’s local food programs at St. Patrick-St. Vincent Catholic High School. The Local Food team will have details about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs in Vallejo and Benicia where you buy directly from local farms, favorite family recipes from our Youth Cooking Program students, information about local farms, agritourism, and how to engage in food rescue and recovery. Stick around for student demonstrations and check out beehives and honey there on campus.

Seeking Suisun City, Fairfield & Vacaville Residents Interested in Yard Transformation

Dec 28, 2020

By Gabriela Estrada & Nicole Newell, Program Managers

Do you live in Suisun City, Fairfield or Vacaville? Are you interested in working with your neighbors and community to install a demonstration food forest garden or other sustainable landscaping elements in the coming months at your home or a community site, like a place of worship or school?

Sustainable Solano is currently looking for private or public sites and residents that are interested in working with their neighbors to transform these properties to grow food, create habitat and build healthy soil, while using water efficiently. The search for these sites is targeted in specific neighborhoods that are vulnerable to flood and fire.

We envision neighborhoods better equipped to adapt and thrive in the face of environmental, social and economic changes. The need for strong communities where people know and care for their neighbors is more apparent than ever, and projects such as these through our Resilient Neighborhoods and Solano Sustainable Backyards programs can help to build resilience in our neighborhoods as we connect with one another.

Suisun City and Fairfield

We are looking for residents in Suisun City and Fairfield (in the areas outlined in red in the map below) that are interested in working collaboratively to transform their neighborhoods into robust regenerative urban ecosystems that mimic nature in performing valuable functions like producing food, filtering air and cycling water. We are looking for sites to create beautiful and productive gardens that build healthy soil while using water wisely.

Vacaville

In August 2020, the LNU Lightning Complex Fire affected many Vacaville residents. We are looking to identify a private property in Vacaville that was damaged by the fires to begin to restore the ecological health of the land through the installation of a demonstration garden that would incorporate best practices for designing in a fire zone.

All of these projects will be done through public, educational installations that share knowledge and techniques used to address flooding or fire risk as well as sustainable landscaping principles. If you live within the highlighted areas of the map of Fairfield and Suisun City or your yard was damaged in the LNU Fire and you are interested in creating waterwise, edible food forest gardens, please fill out the Sustainable Landscape Interest Form or contact nicole@sustainablesolano.org. Once we receive the form, we will be looking to schedule site assessments for properties that suit the programs. By February, we hope to select multiple sites for yard transformations.

We are looking forward to hearing about your vision for your neighborhood!

4th Annual Demonstration Food Forest Tour a Reimagined Success

May 1, 2020

By Nicole Newell, Sustainable Landscaping Program Manager

Permaculture expert John Valenzuela shows the roof water outlet at Living & Learning garden in Benicia during the video tour

Our 4th Annual Demonstration Food Forest garden tour was very different this year, but still brought people together in new ways around the concepts of permaculture and creating waterwise, edible gardens. Permaculture expert John Valenzuela gave a talk over Zoom to nearly 100 people that included a Q&A session and a pre-recorded video tour with John in one of our 27 demonstration food forest gardens.

What also made this year unique was it opened up the opportunity for people from all over the country to be able to attend, even people from the UK and Canada! It was comforting to see all of the familiar faces and exciting to see new people as we are all adjusting to this new way of interacting through video conferencing.

We had to rethink the annual tour this year due to the pandemic and social distancing. The big vision is a community day of local people gathering to tour the gardens, get to know each other and learn about permaculture concepts that can be applied to their landscapes. The original plan was to begin the tour at Avant Garden in Benicia with John’s talk and then 14 demonstration food forest gardens would be open in Benicia and Vallejo for a self-guided tour. These gardens are open annually to educate the community on how to create beautiful and productive gardens that build healthy soil and use water wisely.

Knowing we needed to bring the tour to life in a new way this year, our Sustainable Solano team got into solution mindset. We found David Avery, a videographer that made the video of John touring Living & Learning food forest in Benicia. Then on April 25, John gave his live talk over Zoom and answered many questions on plants and fruit trees. For those who couldn’t make the live event, you can view the talk and Q&A in the video below.

 

View the Living & Learning tour video below.

 

Stay tuned for more! In May, we will record Lydia Neilsen touring The Ripple Effect and The Enchanted Cottage garden in Vallejo. At a later date, Lydia will present her Rehydrate the Earth talk in a live Zoom call. We are also creating a series of short videos on the elements that go into creating your own food forest garden. To stay on top of the latest, subscribe to our newsletter here.

Two Demonstration Gardens Coming to Fairfield!

Nov 1, 2017

Sustainable Solano will be installing two demonstration food forest gardens in Fairfield at a private residence and one public location as part of its Sustainable Backyard program. The program aims to teach gardening techniques based on permaculture design principles (layered planting system that supports life) and wise water practices such as groundwater storage, roofwater catchment, and laundry-to-landscape greywater re-use. The expansion of these garden installation projects is funded by the Solano County Water Agency with the first project scheduled for 11/04, 11/11, and 12/16 at a private residential backyard.

This three-day installation will serve as a free, hands-on educational workshop open to Solano county residents. Attendees will have the opportunity to be a part of building the foundation for this garden by creating contour swales, building berms, planting fruit tree guilds and the installation of a laundry-to-landscape greywater system.

This holiday season, the program will also move forward with the creation of an edible “Christmas” food forest garden at Mission Solano, a transitional housing shelter that provides food, lodging, faith support and job training to over one hundred individuals and families in Solano County. Mission Solano sits on 3.5 acres with much of its land being underdeveloped making it an ideal location for a public demonstration food forest community garden. The demonstration garden will also include swales to capture rainwater, a laundry-to-landscape system, permaculture planting methods and will be open most Saturdays of the year for self-guided tours.

 

Mission Solano relies heavily on food donations and struggles with providing resident guests high-quality, nutritious food and access to fresh fruits and vegetables. A portion of food is purchased by the organization itself. Both partnering agencies saw an opportunity to not only reduce program food costs through this project, but to also serve the greater community by providing educational opportunities for Fairfield residents to learn about growing their own food, secondary water use and building resilient communities. On Saturday, 12/2 the public is welcome to attend a free greywater system installation workshop to learn how secondary water from your laundry and roof can feed an entire garden.

 

Most of the installation work and ongoing maintenance of this demo food forest garden will be completed by Mission Solano volunteers. The project is in in alignment with the agencies “job therapy” program that helps resident guests develop skills for future employment and sustainable living. Chief Operating Officer of Mission Solano, Shauna Hughes states, “By teaching our guests how to grow their own food, we can equip them to continue doing so once they establish permanent housing. This will help them overcome the barrier to good nutrition that most low-income residents face.”

 

 

Registration is required for all installation workshops for both public and private projects. Visit www.sustainablesolano.org/events to register.

The Sustainable Backyard program will expand to Suisun City next spring and to Vacaville in the fall of 2018.  Sustainable Solano will be looking for both private and public lands to install food forests in these cities. Visit www.sustainablesolano.org and www.facebook.com/sustainablesolano for updates and details about this expansion.

About Sustainable Solano

Sustainable Solano a non-profit organization is a non-profit organization dedicated to Nurturing Initiatives for the Good of the Whole. For more information, email info@sustainablesolano.org or visit www.sustainablesolano.org.