| Cotati's Pocket Park tucks in where Lasalle Avenue meets Lakewood and the meandering Cotati Creek and a footbridge crosses over from L section to the Bird Section. This produced all in addition environmental harm to watershed restoration efforts being made in the waterway by Cotati Critters, the city's volunteer corps. This year, gardeners and visitors will be able to snack on and gather white and raspberries, blueberries, elderberries, and artichokes; pears, persimmons, apples, pomegranates and figs. If that's not practical enough for you, Pocket Park has saved the City of Cotati 120,000 gallons of water over two years and has inspired hundreds of homeowners to replace their lawns with similar landscaping through the city's Cash for Grass program. " Adds Axelrod, "Everyone loves food. Picard's company, Equinox Landscaping, gives an assist to heavy work like tree, shrub and perennial pruning. This Petaluma-based nonprofit education and water-conservation program founded in 2001 had already transformed that city's Cavanagh Community Center grounds and was looking for opportunities to transform water-hogging lawn to water-storing landscape in other local towns. '" But after visits to sustainable cities in Brazil and South Africa, her responsibility to nourishing home-grown food came alive. They continue to maintain the park with the help of Daily Acts and other volunteers. The Lakewood Avenue entrance to the park advertises the program, encouraging neighbors and visitors to "replace your thirsty lawns with beautiful water-efficient landscapes. "The system conserves all its energy, from the tree canopy to the roots along with the intertwining vine layer. Not to mention the L and Bird section neighborhoods connected by a footbridge over the creek. " Pocket Park is now a "Water Conservation Model Garden. In winter, unmeasured gallons of rainwater contaminated with road runoff, fertilizers and other effluent washed over it and into the creek. "We aim to create environmental opportunities that inspire residents and save money," says programs manager Erin Axelrod. They do that by using ecological design to create a "permaculture" that supports itself. "When you look at a forest ecology, there's no waste," she says. Members of the public can learn anything from native plant selection, gardening and pruning to developing rainwater catchment and greywater irrigation, hand-making colors from plants, fermenting mead and solar-drying their garden produce. Seventy percent of those who volunteered the first year lived within walking distance. Daily Acts also sponsors workshops, events and tours of this and other permaculture projects. This improves the life in the creek. The plants work together to build the soil, which now absorbs rainwater and lets it percolate. |
Saturday, 3 March 2012
Remaking Cotati's Pocket Park
