California Landscape Design

Above garden featured in our April 8th LA garden tour. Design and photo: Julie Deamer, Yard Queen

APLD Leadership Symposium: Looking Back, Moving Forward!

In early March, APLD held a leadership symposium in Orlando, Florida, to help Chapter and District leaders understand the challenges we face as an organization and to identify ways to move forward. Having the opportunity to address these issues with designers from across the country was invaluable for me, and it was gratifying to feel that we are working on them as a team. Over three days we parsed out reasons and trends for our current situation and developed strategies to improve and better communicate what we are about.

In recent years APLD has weathered a Great Recession and a tightening of eligibility to be a member. This has resulted in a significant reduction in active members, and a key goal is to expand our brand to recruit new members and bring those back who have let their membership expire. How do we do that?

The new message of APLD is: Advocacy, Education, and Community. All of these have been present in our organization from the beginning, but now we need to bring them to the front. I have benefited from my membership in countless ways, from learning new design skills to best business practices for our industry. This organization makes me the best at what I do, as it does for all our members. Look for upcoming communications on strengthening our brand, improving our organization, and helping APLD grow. Get involved today!

by David Clarke, APLD
San Diego District President

APLD at Modernism Week

Once again this year, APLD Greater LA and San Diego members took Palm Springs Modernism Week by storm. The annual February event celebrates midcentury modern design and encourages sustainable modern living—the ideal venue for our talented landscape designers to attract potential clients and raise the profile of APLD.

 We sold tickets offering 30 minutes of design advice for $30 to homeowners from throughout Southern California and as far as Texas, Canada and Australia. This year’s attendance broke previous records, bringing in an estimated 126,000 people to the Coachella Valley for the week-long event.

A big thank you to this year’s designers: Lisa Bellora and David Clarke, APLD, of San Diego and Shawn Maestretti, and Laura Morton, APLD, of Greater LA They were tireless! The great news is that several of the homeowners followed up with the designers and became actual clients!

We are excited to participate again next year, so mark your calendars. Modernism 2019 is set for February 14-24. APLD will be offering landscape design consults February 16, 2019.

by Kristan Browne
APLD Greater Los Angeles District Member & APLD National Board of Directors

APLD Sacramento District Celebrates a Watershed Win

A new opportunity to educate residents about the watershed approach to landscaping and reducing outdoor water use arose when Bobby Alvarez, the City of Roseville’s environmental utilities water conservation administrator, told me about the Sustain the Gains Contest. Learning that the contest winner’s front yard would be transformed from grass to garden, I jumped at the chance to participate in the sustainable makeover.

A lot of Roseville residents—in fact, over 3,200—wanted to be part of it as well. Entrants provided testimonies about what they’d done to conserve water, such as using a bucket to catch shower water while waiting for it to get hot. The winners, Debi and Kurt Nelson, were selected for their extraordinary water-conserving practices, even when California was not experiencing drought conditions.

The objective of the Sustain the Gains contest was to encourage residents to continue water-efficient behaviors established during the most recent (and continuing) drought, in keeping with Governor Brown’s Executive Order B-37-16  to “make water conservation a way of life in California.” Creating this contest is a testament to the city’s reputation for being progressive. They also developed videos about the project and held a gathering for the community to meet the appreciative and deserving Nelsons, and to learn about this watershed-wise landscape transformation. 

Having worked with Roseville’s Water Efficiency Division on a number of projects, such as the Greener Gardens Tours, and teaching numerous River-Friendly–based workshops, I was asked to coordinate the transformation process and design the winner’s front yard. Martin Carrion van Rijn, APLD Sacramento District president, was selected to be the installing landscape contractor. (Cheryl and Martin also worked together in 2016 on “The Garden on Eden Way” project for the Sacramento Suburban Water District. Learn more and watch a video by clicking here.)

While the Nelsons’ front yard was not large enough to require meeting  Model Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance (MWELO) specifications, we designed and installed it as though it were.

Furthering the APLD connection, two of our sponsors partnered with Roseville for the contest. Gold Sponsor Green Acres Nursery donated a $500 gift certificate, which was used for decorative containers, and Silver Sponsor Hunter Industries / FX Luminaire donated irrigation equipment—everything from the Hydrawise controller to the valves, dripline and fittings, and Eco Indicators! 

During our site assessment, we learned that winter rains send water from the American and Sacramento Rivers streaming through the front yard, down a slope and into storm drains. We practically jumped for joy! It was the perfect scenario for demonstrating a key principle of the watershed approach: retaining and infiltrating storm water. By contouring the soil to create swales and carving out rain gardens and spillways, we created a truly functional stream bed.

While we were thrilled with this opportunity, we also faced the time-crunch and budgetary reality of  the makeover contest/municipality demo, so we needed to compromise some of our ideals about staying 100% true to the watershed principles. 

We used a sod cutter (gasp!) instead of sheet mulching the lawn, and heavy equipment for some demolition. But throughout the installation Martin mitigated soil compaction, for example, by laying down large pieces of plywood for wheeling in boulders.

This project was a good lesson in reminding us of the need to be creative when dealing with real-world conditions. Watershed principles are not a set of rigid rules, but a set of principles applied by making sound decisions. The reward of selecting appropriate plants, nurturing the soil, and building rain gardens is that even a small investment can result in a landscape that is both beautiful and functional.

Once the highly efficient irrigation system was installed and the numbers were totaled, we’d used 20 cubic yards of mulch, 37 species of plants (81% drought tolerant and 27% California natives), 5 cubic yards of compost, and worm castings in each of the 142 planting holes.

As the project came to an end after the last of the mulch was pulled away from the base of each tree and plant, this gorgeous landscape promised a savings of over 33,000 gallons of water per year. The Nelsons will definitely be successful in “sustaining the gains”!