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.

Sustainable Solano seeks ‘food forest’ applicants in Suisun

Feb 10, 2018

By 

SUISUN CITY — If you live in Suisun City and want to turn your yard into a thriving, edible ecosystem, Sustainable Solano would like to hear from you.

The grassroots local nonprofit that started in Benicia is expanding its work to Suisun City and is looking for homeowners interested in creating demonstration “seed plot” food forests in their backyards.

Sustainable Solano will be taking applications through March 16 and will visit each applicant’s site before making a selection sometime in late March.

What is called a permaculture food forest would include using rainwater and gray water from the laundry, a drip irrigation system and sheet mulch. The plants would include fruit trees, berries and plants that are beneficial to insects.

Both the owner and a cadre of volunteers would spend four weekends putting in the food forest whose layout would be cooperatively designed by the homeowner and Sustainable Solano.

The goal is to create between an 1,800- and 2,000-square-foot “oasis of productivity and beauty to nourish you and inspire others,” according to the application that’s available online.

In return for Sustainable Solano helping set up the food forest, the homeowners would be expected to make a five-year commitment to take care of it and open it to the public twice a year as part of an annual garden tour.

“You definitely have to have a green thumb,” Sustainable Solano Executive Director Elena Karoulina said.

Sustainable Solano started in 2016 when supporters of Benicia Community Gardens changed the name as part of its goal to inspire and help the rest of the county to locally grow, regionally source, cook and enjoy healthy food.

The group set up two private gardens and a public one in Vallejo in 2017 and more recently started gardens in Fairfield at Mission Solano, Suisun Valley Elementary School and a private home. They are now looking for one public and one private location in Suisun City and plan to start a similar effort in Vacaville and Dixon later this year.

The group hosted a forum Saturday with author and permaculture expert Denise Rushing and plans a sustainable landscape class at 6 p.m. Thursday at The Salvation Army’s Kroc Center at 586 E. Wigeon Way.

For more information and the application, go to www.SustainableSolano.org.

Denise Rushing Speaks in Suisun City

Jan 30, 2018

Sustainable Solano is expanding its Sustainable Backyard and Conversations programs into Suisun City bringing informative workshops on sustainable landscaping and inspiring talks on topics such as global sustainability, community resilience, permaculture, local food systems and sustainable landscape design.

On Saturday, February 3rd at the Suisun Harbor Theater (720 Main Street, Suisun City) author, permaculture expert and former elected official (Lake County Board of Supervisors) Denise Rushing will launch the official expansion with an evening of conversation on how to create resilient, cooperative communities through meaningful and inspiring human-scale initiatives using social permaculture principles.

As a pioneer in environmental advocacy, Denise has devoted her life to transforming humanity’s relationship with Earth and has spearheaded numerous community revitalization efforts across the Western United States. Attendees of this FREE event will learn creative ways to invest personal energy to engage and transform local neighborhoods from the grassroots by choosing projects that are fun and have the potential to connect across the spectrum.

Registration is required for this FREE event. Click here to register.

The Sustainable Backyard and Conversations program will expand to Vacaville in the fall of 2018.  Visit our calendar and follow us on Facebook for updates and details about this expansion.

A Peaceful World Conversation: Connecting with the Earth From Urban Gardening to Rural Farming

Jan 3, 2018

As part of the Peaceful World Foundation’s attempt to bring meaningful, inspiring conversations about topics that matter to the people, Peaceful World Conversations breakfast conversation sessions provide a unique communication style platform. These engaging gatherings aim to build awareness on various topics important to people’s lives through meaningful discussions that contribute to the development of ourselves and our communities. Peaceful World Conversations offer an opportunity to grow in self-knowledge, ask meaningful questions and co-create new possibilities.

This season, Sustainable Solano along with a network of other organizations who work with the land, had the opportunity to participate as co-host of a breakfast conversation event at Café X in San Francisco to discuss our past and current relationship with the planet and opportunities to deepen our connection with the earth to live in harmony with its soils and waters.

Plant medicine, eating food of our own cultivation, and re-discovering our role in the management of this planet were topics discussed by all who attended. Contrasting city life verses life closer to nature drew many differing views on the benefits of each live condition and finding balance in the tranquility that forest life brings and the order and systematic abundance provided by city life.

Sustainable Solano board member, Marlen Otten talked about the impact of food forest installation projects on building community and establishing a true connection with the earth by getting your hands dirty extending a social connection to the people engaged in such projects.

Members of the Peaceful World Foundation leadership team: Heidi Majano (Program Director), Helene Szabados (Program Coordinator) and David Whitridge (Board Member), spoke about local food systems and our growing disconnect from its production and cultivation. People shared their observations on how large quantities of processed foods having decreased a general appreciation for nature and our food sources.

After acknowledging the outstanding issues, conversations led into a more solution-based approach when the table was asked to provide feedback on ways one could begin connecting with the Earth right now. Several opportunities surfaced through these discussions and attendees from various cultural backgrounds, experience with the land and knowledge chimed in with stories about how their ancestors honored the earth and the food produced in its soils. Heritage Gardens, where traditional plants from varying ancestral backgrounds are cultivated and cared for by methods used from generations prior, was an inspirational topic of discussion and was embraced as an opportunity to reconnect with culture and nature.

The conversation concluded with some takeaway ideas for beginning to connect with the Earth.

  • Joining a community garden to build strong relationships with your community
  • Educating the youth of agricultural practices
  • Walking a garden
  • Recognizing our role in the cultivation of the planet is the start to a sustainable future
  • Finding our ancestral connections to the earth

 

“Greyhawk Grove” Food Forest Tour — Stop #5

Mar 1, 2017

 

It was a cool and sunny day for the Greyhawk Grove Tour, and perhaps it was that, or that our tour is gathering steam, that nearly 30 people squeezed into a room to listen to Lydia Neilsen from the Regenerative Design Institute. She started with a brief overview of permaculture design principles: people care, earth care–and then dove straight into practical, simple applications to one’s garden, covering hands-on details of creating swales (or as someone coined them, “Magical ditches”), appreciating weeds and the natural succession of plant life, and mimicking that healthy ecosystem balance in tree and plant guilds. She fielded questions about greywater, and, noting that several Food Forest Keepers were in attendance, had them field questions as well. Attendees remarked on on simple, clear, and practical her talk was.

The overflowing group then spilled out into the demonstration food forest itself, were Lydia pulled up a giant fava bean to show the group the roots and speak about cover crops, nitrogen fixation and soil health. She also ate a nodule, declaring it tasted like peanuts and offered it to anyone who wanted to try. They were able to see the laundry-to-landscape switch and pipes, look at the greywater basins, the rainwater pipes that flowed straight into the two swales, how the natural slope and chicken coop was incorporated into the planning, and snuggle up the free range chickens who were milling about. “We used to have one of these at the farm,” said the farm director of Loma Vista Farms after she cuddled up a polish chicken–known for a mop of feathers on top of its head that looks like punk-rocker hair. “We used to call it our Tina Turner chicken. But now the kids don’t get the reference. I guess rockstar chicken still works.”

It was a rockstar day all around. And we look forward to the next stop in the tour–stop #6, “The Curious Garden.”

For more information and to register for “The Curious Garden”, please go here.

Continue the Conversation: Awakening the Dreamer

Jan 4, 2017

Sustainable Solano would like to share a video that a friend, Kristian, made! It certainly highlights the most meaningful moments and makes us reflect on how moving of an experience this was for us.