Ratepayers Get Their Hands Dirty
30 SOURCE fall 2017
SACRAMENTO SUBURBAN WATER DISTRICT’S (SSWD)
Garden on Eden and the Gardens at Howe Park grew out of
discussions at the California Water Efficiency Partnership (for-merly
the California Urban Water Conservation Council) on
expanding the benefits of low-water landscapes beyond water
conservation. The potential for multiple benefits was attractive given that
the district was looking for alternative ways to provide ideas and inspi-ration
to customers on what drought-tolerant landscapes could look like
as it continues to evolve and refine its dialogue on water conservation.
By Amanda Hohner and
Fernando L. Rosario-Ortiz
Sacramento Suburban Water District makes demonstration gardens work.
By Greg Bundesen and Marian Bender
SSWD serves approximately 174,434
customers in the eastern suburbs of
Sacramento County. The district’s source
water include 73 active groundwater
wells, contractual rights to 26,064 acre-feet
from the City of Sacramento surface
water entitlement, and a contract to
purchase up to 29,000 acre-feet of surface
water per year from Placer County
Water Agency.
The Garden on Eden
One of the district’s well sites is lo-cated
in a residential subdivision. To help
the facility blend into the neighborhood,
a façade was constructed that mimicked
the surrounding tract homes, complete
with a conventional lawn. The lawn had
been allowed to go “brown” during the
recent drought, but when the rains final-ly
arrived and weeds started appearing,
the district realized the site could provide
an important canvas for a more beauti-ful,
water-wise garden and provide an
opportunity to “Walk the Talk” when it
comes to transforming thirsty lawns into
water-wise plant-based landscapes.
Familiar with EcoLandscape Califor-nia,
a local non-profit dedicated to edu-cating
and advocating for ecologically
responsible landscapes, and aware that it
offered four complete landscape and ir-rigation
plans on its website, the district
invited EcoLandscapes to implement
one of those landscapes at the well site,
coupling it with a workshop for SSWD
customers. EcoLandscape was enthusi-astic
about the idea and suggested that
the project include some onsite hands-on
classes in which the participants would
actually help install the landscape. This
provided a chance to realize the goal of
EcoLandscape instructors to increase the
impact of their workshops by provid-ing
students the opportunity to actually
practice what they learned.
EcoLandscape brought a proposal
for the project to the district for review
by the Board of Directors. After it was
approved, three classes were held in a
district classroom facility on weekday
evenings, with two additional Saturday
hands-on classes held at the landscape
installation site. The workshop series
was promoted by both EcoLandscape
and the district, through social media,
emails, calendar listings, and articles in
local community newspapers. Twenty-one
students completed the course.
Weekday evening classes focused on
How Landscaping Affects Our Watershed,
Choosing the Right Plants and Putting Them
in the Right Place, Water-Efficient Irrigation,
Building Healthy Soil, and Integrated Pest
Management. The weekend hands-on
classes offered brief on-site training, after
which the students participated in sheet-mulching
a portion of the landscape,
installing a grid of inline emitter drip
irrigation, and identifying, placing and
planting plants. Each student received a
workbook featuring all the PowerPoint
presentations from the workshops and
links to other helpful resources. They
were also provided full planting and
irrigation plans for the site.