Native Plants through a Modern Lens

San Francisco is a national leader in sustainable urban development, having passed citywide ordinances on mandatory green building, recycling, and environmental ethics. To bring this same ethos to the complex subject of urban water management, the City has incorporated a number of  “Green Infrastructure” (GI) projects into its massive, multi-billion dollar Sewer System Improvement Program (SSIP). To ensure the success of the municipal GI projects, the City provides contractor training on design guidelines and best practices. To date, 40 firms have completed the training program, including Madroño Landscape Design Studio. But unlike many of the larger firms which are engaged in more commercial and municipal projects, Madroño’s residential business sees the SSIP as a launching pad to engage private property owners more deeply in the larger vision of greening our city.

So what is Green Infrastructure? In essence, it is a landscaping strategy that diverts rain into planted areas and eventually back into the water table, rather than sending it into the sewer. This method replaces impermeable surfaces like asphalt and concrete with permeable pavers and infiltration basins that allow rain water to percolate into the earth. Less water in the sewer means lower treatment costs for the city, less chance of overwhelmed sewers, and an overall recharging of the water table for improved plant and soil health. The City has found that optimal GI design prevents nearly 90% of stormwater from entering the sewer system.

But Raphael Garcia, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) GI Project Manager, spoke of the challenges still facing this issue: “Municipal projects can only go so far, as 80% of the impervious surfaces in this city are on private property.” This eye-opening statistic raises the question: what programs are in place to reach this vast and largely unaddressed majority of the city landscape?

Free money for green infrastructure!

“I’d be out there running amok, if not dead or locked up again -- Planting Justice saved my life,” says Julius Jones. Sitting in the sun on the 5-acre “Mother Orchard” in El Sobrante, Jones and other recent inmates of San Quentin State Prison offer nothing but praise for the Oakland-based nonprofit, founded in 2009 by Gavin Raders and Haleh Zandi. As one of 31 former prisoners hired by Planting Justice in the past 7 years, Jones is among a growing number of participants in the Holistic Re-Entry program, which educates former inmates about the benefits of regenerative landscape design, called permaculture. The program starts with garden training during incarceration, and provides employment opportunities for prisoners upon their release, translating planting skills into living-wage job opportunities.

Dry lakes are places in the desert where drainage stops, and goes no further. Landscape dead-ends, they attract activities drawn to nowheres. Many dry lakes have no name, marked on maps only as alkali flat, salt flat, sink, mudflat, wash, or playa (if at all). 

Leave it to The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) to curate such a creative and interesting show. A research and education organization, CLUI is dedicated to the increase and diffusion of knowledge about how the nation's lands are apportioned, used, and perceived. They find new meanings in the intentional and incidental landforms we individually and collectively create, and believe that the manmade landscape is a cultural inscription, which can be read as insight into who we are and what we do.

Go native, stay modern!  In this free presentation by Madrono president Geoffrey Coffey, we will learn that native plants are wildlife friendly, drought-tolerant, and locally appropriate — not to mention beautiful.  Learn how you can weave color, texture, and aroma into the garden using the natural flora that lived here long before we did. 

The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) has announced a statewide lawn-replacement rebate program to encourage the ongoing trend away from water-wasting yards. Owners of single-family residences who agree to rip out turf grass and replace it with drought-tolerant landscaping (such as native plant gardens) can apply to the program and be reimbursed for their expenses at the rate of $2 per square foot of lawn removed, up to a maximum of $2,000 per property. 

Today the Santa Clara Valley Water District announced an increase in the dollar value of their Landscape Conversion Rebate. Eligible property owners who choose to replace "highly irrigated landscape" (such as turf lawns) with drought-tolerant alternatives will be paid $2 per square foot of property so converted. 

CaliforniaFIRST, the government-supported PACE financing program for sustainable energy projects, is now available to property owners in San Francisco.  Eligible landscape improvements include drip irrigation, low-voltage LED lighting, solar panels, greywater systems, and stormwater capture and reuse programs, a particular specialty of Madroño Landscape Design Studio.  

At the upcoming Going Native Garden Tour, a free annual tour of private native plant gardens in Santa Clara Valley and the Peninsula, Madroño president Geoffrey Coffey will appear at Garden #16 in Los Altos Hills to serve as docent, where he will speak at length on Vertical Landscaping.

The award for Best Overall Design in the Small Spaces Living section of the 2013 San Francisco Home & Garden Show was given to Madroño Landscape Design Studio and Bay Natives nursery for "Pacific Rim Fusion," an exhibit of California native landscaping with Japanese inflection. 

California Assembly Bill 1750 was signed by Governor Jerry Brown today to enact the Rainwater Capture Act of 2012, a significant new measure clarifying that the use of rainwater captured from rooftops does not require a water right permit from the State Water Resources Control Board.  

MODERN & NATIVE:
Contemporary Design Meets

In a push for citizens to install greywater irrigation systems in their homes, the SFPUC (city water department) has launched a program to offset the cost of materials for qualifying households.  The so-called Laundry-to-Landscape program requires a formal application with proof that the property has a working washing machine and a yard that is level or downsloping away from the machine's outflow.  The first 150 qualifying households will receive a 95% subsidy toward the purchase of a hardware kit (hub connectors, three-way valves, etc.) to divert greywater from the sewers and use it to irrigate the garden. Only 1- or 2-unit residential buildings are eligible, and only these buildings are allowed to install greywater systems without a permit from the building department. To encourage and promote the use of graywater systems in larger and/or commercial or industrial buildings, the SFPUC also offers a rebate up to $225 toward the cost of obtaining a permit. To be eligible, the graywater system must be used for subsurface irrigation only.

Join Madroño founder and president Geoffrey Coffey for a talk and slide show at the Brisbane Library on modern gardens using locally appropriate native plants.ADMISSION:
Free!

But so many existing fences in the city are ugly, common, built on the cheap, installed by rote with no insight, like mere place-holders.  We swoon at the magnitude of lost opportunities.  If well designed, the fence can strive for art even as it performs its necessary, divisive duties.  The key to the sublime lies in transparency to sunlight.

Landscape design can bridge otherwise impassable hurdles.

Consider the case of this San Francisco backyard: a sheer slope on the southeast face of Mount Davidson, where a concrete drainage trench carries winter's seasonal river and then runs dry for summer and fall. The trench cuts off houses from their gardens and limits human access to the yards uphill. At this particular house, the existing deck was built out to the edge of the trench, with no means of getting across.

Question: How to deal with this ugly yet necessary piece of engineering?

Answer: Add another level of deck to bridge the gap. Set the platform at an angle to diverge from the rectangular facade of the house, and to suggest triangular shapes in the landscape. Cantilever all four edges 24" over the beams, thus hiding the posts so the deck appears to float above the ground.

This deck, with bench and arbor, is both a place to inhabit and to pass through. We cut a path in switchbacks up the slope from the point of contact with the platform, removed all french broom, fennel, and ivy from the hill, and replanted with native pinegrass, junegrass, and needlegrass; a field of silver lupine and scattered Ceanothus to attract butterflies, especially the fabled Mission Blue; elderberries and manzanitas for bird-friendly flowers and berries; and more.