FREE WATERSHED WISE LANDSCAPE PROGRAMS
Ventura County Waterworks: 6767 Spring Road, Moorpark. 9 a.m. to noon Saturday. RSVP: 508-378-3000.
conservation groups
Surfrider Foundation: Learn more about Ocean Friendly Gardens and workshops, 949-492-8170, www.surfrider.org.
G3 Green Gardens Group: 149 S. Barrington Ave., Suite 758, Los Angeles, 310-694.8351, www.greengardensgroup.com, and its Watershed Wise Landscaping Programs, www.watershedwisetraining.com.
When water from sprinklers, a hose or rain flows down the street toward the storm drain, it picks up pollutants: fertilizer, motor oil, brake pad dust, trash, dog poop. This, says the Surfrider Foundation, is the No. 1 cause of ocean pollution.
But the nonprofit organization, dedicated to protecting the world’s oceans, believes it can be stopped.
Several years ago, Surfrider launched an Ocean Friendly Gardens program aimed at promoting water conservation and soil absorption at home, which would prevent pollution from entering the ocean through urban runoff. With so much of the region paved over, TreePeople estimates that for every inch of rain that falls on Los Angeles, 3.8 billion gallons of water pour into the Pacific. That’s close to half of the more than 8.5 billion gallons of water used outdoors by households in the U.S. every day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
“It’s like a giant pipeline to the ocean,” says Paul Herzog, who coordinates the Ocean Friendly Gardens program. “If we can use that water for our plants, then we won’t have to rely on imported water or ground water and we’ll eliminate pollution from urban runoff. It’s a great two for one.”
Part of the program focuses on hands-on workshops led by Los Angeles-based G3 Green Gardens Group. Do-it-yourselfers learn how to transform a garden into a sustainable, urban wildlife habitat with California native and climate-appropriate plants.
“By planting plants that are from our area, it connects us to where we are instead of just having palm trees and grass everywhere,” Herzog says. “You get the birds and the bees and the butterflies dependent on those native plants. The monarch butterfly’s young depend on milkweed, so that would be a great plant for everyone to have.”
The three-hour class walks participants through every step, including turf removal and soil preparation through sheet mulching (also known as the lasagna method, with its alternate layers of paper and mulch). Installing irrigation and adding dry stream beds and other permeable hardscapes, such as decomposed granite, capture water so it can soak into the ground, providing hydration for plants and replenishing the aquifers.
“If you have these little ‘sponges’ everywhere, you’re so much more likely to not only prevent runoff and pollution, but you don’t need a big solution anywhere,” Herzog says. “It’s difficult to clean up water at the end of a storm drain — it’s high volume, it’s moving fast and you need a lot of room or you need some expensive technological device.”
But to have small solutions all over the region?
“It creates multiple benefits,” he says. “You get plants and healthy soil, you get habitat and food for native wildlife. If you plant a tree, you get shade for your car or house. These are things you don’t get by putting a filter at the end of a pipe.”
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