Promoting Biodiversity through Public Education
by Tom Rau and Carolyn Griffiths
Urban Water Group, Inc.
Los Angeles, CA
Completed in 2020, the Las Virgenes-Triunfo JPA Pure Water Sustainability Garden located in Calabasas, California is a 7,700 square foot series of garden “classrooms.” The Urban Water Group developed the conceptual design, provided landscape architectural services, and created content for the comprehensive educational signage program and website pages.
Visitor entrance to the Las Virgenes-Triunfo Pure Water Demonstration Facility.
The project was commissioned by the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District as part of its Pure Water Demonstration Facility, the precursor to a cutting-edge water purification plant. This plant will provide the means for testing different purification systems and training operators. Additionally, visitors will be allowed to view the process in action.
This commitment to public education led to the Pure Water Sustainability Garden, which surrounds the Facility and contains fifteen distinct rooms as well as an amphitheater. Each room has an informative sign that explains the primary – although not the only – purpose of the space, with QR codes to website pages where visitors can view educational videos, browse supporting content, and download plant lists.
Educational content is displayed on informational signage in each garden room.
As might be expected from a municipal water plant, all the classrooms were designed to reduce water use and/or retain storm water: some of these are obvious, such as the rain garden, rain barrel installation, irrigation, and permeable paving areas, while others are more obscure, featuring such elements as lawn alternatives (to replace notoriously thirsty traditional turf) and a hillside garden with plantings that inhibit storm water runoff.
The rain garden installation features dramatic boulders and plants adapted to both wet and dry conditions.
Lawn alternatives, such as the Kurapia shown here, use up to 80% less water than traditional turf.
Native plants are also emphasized, along with a succulent garden, neither of which will require supplemental watering once established. The succulent garden also demonstrates the advantages of low-flammability plantings in settings where fire risk is high.
Monkeyflower, sundrops, and purple nightshade are some examples of the many colorful native plants used at the Sustainability Garden to support pollinators.
Succulents are attractive to pollinators and reduce flammability in high fire-risk areas.
Quite beyond water issues, however, was the obligation to encourage biodiversity. To this end, spaces were created to provide food, water and habitat for local insects and wildlife. Food is particularly abundant in the pollinator, native, wildflower meadow, and succulent gardens, with their native and flowering plants that are attractive to bees, wasps and hummingbirds.
Native flowering plants, such as California bush sunflower and apricot mallow, provide food for insects and hummingbirds.
Water is available year-round in the water feature garden, with a stream bed shallow enough for even small birds to use for bathing and drinking. Habitat is emphasized by providing nesting places and cover, most especially in the oak and shade gardens, along with the hedges and vines area with its dense shrubbery.
The water feature, designed as a pond and shallow stream bed, provides habitat for amphibians, and a place for insects and birds to drink and bathe.
The California native live oak provides both food and habitat, as do the summer-dry native shrubs and plants surrounding it.
Another design concern was to promote sustainable landscaping as a means of inviting nature into our lives and helping us achieve balance. For a more interactive experience, guests will be encouraged to take photographs of plants, insects, birds, and other wildlife and to post the pictures on social media apps such as www.inaturalist.org. And, of course, no artificial fertilizers or pesticides will be used in the Pure Water Sustainability Garden.
Although public events and classes are not currently being conducted at the Sustainability Garden due to pandemic concerns, it is hoped that programs for community outreach and promoting sustainable landscaping practices can begin with tours, classes and other hands-on events later this year.