**UPDATE!** LA River at Atwater Creek Restoration, 13 August 2016

The Dodgers play that afternoon just a few miles south of our meeting place on the river.  PLEASE ALLOW ENOUGH TIME TO GET PAST THE TRAFFIC IF YOU MUST COME IN THROUGH THE DOWNTOWN AREA. IF YOU CAN AVOID IT, DO!  After checking traffic on the radio (KNX 1070 AM does the most frequent traffic reports) or on Waze, I will probably leave the Learning Garden, driving up the 405 to the 101, to the 134 and then take streets in once I've passed the 5 - maybe even go to the 2, depending on traffic.

Your friendly instructors would like to remind our lovely students that we have another field trip this coming Saturday.  We will meet in the parking lot at the confluence of Atwater Creek with the LA River.  A lovely walk along Atwater creek until it flows into the LA River.  For Orchid and I, this is a favorite.  Our starting point is the North Atwater Park. 



View North Atwater Creek Restoration in a larger map 

Chevy Chase Drive, once it makes that final right-hand swoop, dead ends.  As that right-hand swoop begins, the park itself is on the left.  On this map, almost exactly in the blue pin there is a parking lot where we will meet at 1;30 PM.  

This is a good field trip for a camera, and as usual plenty of water and cool clothing. Wear walking shoes and we'll proceed south from the parking lot along the North Atwater Creek on down to the river proper and back again.  Not far and we will amble along without urgency.  I imagine this will be a warm day, but check your weather sources - do take proper care of yourself with the incessantly persistent sunshine!  

Some background data on the site is available online, here.
And some photos from the day it opened for a little prespective.  

Hope you will enjoy this trip and hope you're enjoying the class.

david

Rainwater Talk Friday April 24, and Demonstration Saturday April 25, Sierra Madre

This will be essentially the same talk I gave on Monday, but with an emphasis on Sierra Madre's water issues. If you missed Monday's class, this is the best way to make it up. You are welcome to come to the demo on Saturday, but we will have to do a quick turnaround to get to Garden Garden in Santa Monica.
Details at Native Sanctuary

Link Goodness: Water etc.

Recent water links:

• Almonds in California: They use up a lot of water, but they deserve a place in California’s future.
  California's wealthy lagging in water conservation - LA Times

• California Urban Water Use Restricted While Regulators Give Oil Industry Two More Years To Operate Injection Wells In Protected Groundwater Aquifers | naked capitalism
  
• Climate change and the growing risk of “megadroughts” in California and the southwestern United States
  
• Dew collecting greenhouse to fight water and food scarcity in Ethiopia : TreeHugger
  
• Half of urban California’s water is used to water the grass - MarketWatch
  How you might be contributing to California’s water woes - The Washington Post
  
• In California, a Wet Era May Be Ending - NYTimes.com
  
• Nestlé has been pumping water from a national forest with an expired permit for over 25 years
  
• Nestlé’s despicable water-crisis profiteering: How it’s making a killing — while California is dying of thirst - Salon.com
  
• This roadkill map says a lot about California’s drought | Grist
  

   

  Compost and other links:

• 42 Flowers You Can Eat : TreeHugger
  
• Beyond Compost: 5 Ways to Get Your Soil Ready This Spring by Peter D'Auria and Miles Schneiderman — YES! Magazine
  
• Compost tea calculator includes recipes and guides for brewing your own fertilizers : TreeHugger
  
• Compost Tea Recipe
  
• From Watersheds to Mountains, What If We Based Our Borders on Nature? by Rachael Stoeve — YES! Magazine
  
  
• How to Grow Oyster Mushrooms at Home (and Get Plenty of Flavor and Protein for Free) by YES! editors — YES! Magazine
  
• Plant this with that: The science and folklore of companion planting — Homestead — Bangor Daily News — BDN Maine
  

Field Trip Info for 04 May: garden/garden and The Learning Garden

Field trip for this weekend, May 4th (gosh, it's May already!) is at garden/garden - from 1 to about 2:30, then 2:30 to 4:00 at The Learning Garden, the intersection of Walgrove and Venice Blvd.  The entrance is on Walgrove, just south of  Venice Blvd.  Parking on the street for both venues - bring quarters for the meters at garden/garden.

garden\garden 2013 garden\garden, a public demonstration garden at 1718 and 1724 Pearl St, shows that sustainable landscapes are cost-effective, environmentally beneficial, and easy to replicate. A nine-year case study documenting the resource consumption at the two gardens shows that the Native Garden (1724 Pearl St.) uses 83% less water; generates 56% less green waste and requires 68% less maintenance than the Traditional Garden (1718 Pearl St.). The Learning Garden

The Learning Garden is an eleven year old teaching garden located on the grounds of Venice High School at the intersection of Venice Blvd. and Walgrove Avenue.  A community resource, many classes are taught here from preschool field trips to Emiritus Courses at local colleges. It is an evolving garden, there is no pretense to being 'finished' nor does there appear to be any ambition towards that end.  It is strictly a teaching institution.  

Neither site has refreshments!  There is an accessible restroom at The Learning Garden, not so much at garden/garden. 

david

Sustainable Water Strategies Resource List

Mulch Suppliers that deliver:

Soil and Sod, Pacoima, 818-686-6445

Foothill Soils, Sylmar, 661-254-0867

Rainwater catchment supplies:

Easiest gutter diverter for homeowner rainwater catchment applications

Tanks choose tanks that ship from CA. Also sells first flush systems. Etanks is another option.

Native plants that can be used as lawn:

Carex praegracilis: Meadow Sedge, more runner, turf-forming

Festuca rubra: Red Fescue, the lumpy lawn, requires much more water than above, but easily available in conventional nurseries.

Bouteloua gracilis: Blue gramma grass is also very lumpy, looks like a bluer Bermuda, great for desert/hi-elevation applications.

Books and other resources:

Shawna Dark et al,  Historical Wetlands of the San Gabriel River   I believe this is the newest link to the above research showing how dewatered the landscape of the San Gabriel River watershed has become in the last 100 years.

Art Ludwig

You can buy books, plumbing supplies, etc. from this website. Reading the articles on the website is an education in water storage and reuse. The only source of salt-free dish and laundry cleanser that I am aware of, "Oasis Biocompatible."

Ludwig, The New Create an Oasis with Grey Water, Oasis Design

Ludwig, Builder's Grey Water Guide, Oasis Design

Ludwig, Water Storage: Tanks, Cisterns, Aquifers, and Ponds for Domestic Supply, Fire and Emergency Use--Includes How to Make Ferrocement Water Tanks, Oasis Design

Brad Lancaster,

Another excellent resource for water use.

Lancaster, "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands" Vol 1 & 2, Rainsource Press

Vol. 1 is overview, Vol. 2 is earthworks

Mollison, Mia Slay, "Permaculture: A Designers' Manual," Tagari Publications

Hemenway, "Gaia’s Garden," Chelsea Green, especially good for theory of constructed wetlands

Orchid

Reading List Week Two: Books About Sustainable Design Principles

Principles of Ecological Design, Ludwig, Art, ©1989 Oasis Design, oasisdesign.net. This short manual gives rules for ecological design that are both simple and profound. An excellent companion to his other books which deal with greywater and water storage.

Gaia’s Garden, Hemenway, Tony, © 2000 Chelsea Green. This is the most accessible book about Permaculture for gardeners, especially for the West Coast.

Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, Holmgren, David, © 2002, Holmgren Design Services. A more theoretical approach to sustainable design concepts.

Permaculture: A Designers' Manual, Mollison, Bill, © 1988 Tagari Publications. This comprehensive book is the textbook for the Permaculture Design class. A reference for those who have already been introduced to the principles, as well as a dual duty doorstop and blunt instrument :-). It is on this list for the sake of comprehensiveness.

Design with Nature, McHarg, Ian, © 1982 John Wiley and Sons, Inc. This book is more a lanscape-level and regional-planning book, but has beautiful graphics and exposition about where to site projects. This book addresses the too-rarely asked question, “where is this project?” when designing.


 
The Power of Limits: Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art and Architecture, Gyorgy Doczi, © 1981 Shambhala Publications, Inc. How the Fibonacci sequence and other aspects of the golden mean underlie proportions in nature, and how this has been used historically in good design.
Orchid