Quicklinks
NEW - Lucie Stern Demonstration Garden
Bay-Friendly Garden Tour
Palo Alto's Transition to Bay-Friendly
7 Principles of Bay-Friendly
Bay-Friendly Gardening - Program for Residents
Bay-Friendly Gardening Workshops - Series of workshops to learn Bay-Friendly practices
Free Mulch – Need feedstock for your compost pile?
Bay-Friendly Landscaping – Program for landscape professionals
Qualified Bay-Friendly Landscape Professionals
Bay-Friendly Landscaping & Gardening Coalition

The annual self-guided Garden Tour celebrates the diverse styles of Bay-Friendly gardens. The tour is being held regionally in Alameda, Napa and Santa Clara Counties. The gardens are conveniently located in geographic clusters for easy access. Palo Alto will have a cluster of 10 gardens! Tour Details Sunday, April 29 10am - 4pm Cost is $10 per guidebook

  
Tour Registration
Registration will be available in February.
  
 
Tour Highlights

• Backyard orchards and kitchen gardens
• Urban habitats for butterflies, birds and bees
• Drought tolerant replacements for water thirsty lawns

For more information visit www.bayfriendlycoalition.org or call (707) 353-0143.
 
Tour Sponsors: the Bay-Friendly Landscaping & Gardening Coalition, Zero Waste Palo Alto, Palo Alto Regional Water Quality Control Plant, City of Palo Alto Utilities, GreenWaste of Palo Alto, City of San Jose, SummerWinds Nursery
 
Tour Supporters: Acterra, Common Ground Garden Supply and Education Center, Master Composters of Santa Clara County
  
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Palo Alto has promoted home composting for years. In partnership with the Santa Clara County Home Composting Education Program, the City has historically offered residents monthly home composting workshops and reduced cost composting bins. As we transition to Bay-Friendly Landscaping and Gardening, our support for home composting has not diminished; we are addressing the need for holistic approaches as opposed to compartmentalized, individual programs.

Bay-Friendly integrates a variety of principles that when practiced, work with nature to reduce waste, conserve natural resources and protect the watersheds of the San Francisco Bay. To further this holistic effort, the City is an active participant in the Bay-Friendly Landscaping & Gardening Coalition, a Bay Area-wide membership organization working to promote Bay-Friendly practices. In January 2008, the City of Palo Alto signed the Bay Friendly Coalition' s Declaration of Support of the 7 Principles of Bay-Friendly becoming one of the charter signatories.

All the resources and programs discussed on this page are offered in conjunction with the coalition. More detailed information is available at their website www.BayFriendlyCoalition.org.

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7 Principles of Bay-Friendly

Nurture the Soil
Soils are living ecosystems and when landscape practices allow the soil food web to thrive it can filter pollution, store water, provide plant nutrients, and help plants resist pests naturally.

Conserve Water
Means using a holistic approach of creating drought resistant soils with compost and mulch, selecting plants naturally adapted to summer-dry climates, using stormwater, graywater and recycled water in the landscape as much as possible and using efficient irrigation systems that include self adjusting, weather-based controllers.

Conserve Energy
By reducing the need for mowing and shearing, by shading buildings and paved areas, using efficient outdoor lighting, and buying local landscape products.

Protect Water & Air Quality
Through maximizing permeable surfaces and minimizing stormwater runoff, using integrated pest management, minimizing the use of synthetic pesticides and avoiding overuse of fertilizers, reducing fossil fuel consumption, and planting trees to remove CO₂ and absorb air pollutants.

Create Wildlife Habitat

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Bay-Friendly Gardening
Program for Residents

The Bay-Friendly Gardening program was developed to educate and encourage residents to make environmentally friendly gardening choices. It does not dictate a particular style of garden, but rather is an approach to help residents create a sustainable, healthy and beautiful garden. Bay-Friendly Gardeners work with nature to reduce waste and protect the watersheds of the San Francisco Bay.

Bay-Friendly gardens are not a mold you have to fit into—they offer endless opportunities, from backyard wildlife gardens to kitchen gardens to native plant communities, and more. Bay-Friendly gardening offers an approach to landscaping that makes it easy to have a garden you can enjoy while reducing waste and conserving resources.

• Nurture healthy soil and plants
• Conserve water and other resources
• Reuse plant trimmings through mulching and composting
• Provide wildlife habitat
• Feature native and Mediterranean plants
• Choose least-toxic pest control methods

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Bay-Friendly Gardening Workshops
Find out how to build healthy soil, minimize fertilizer and water use, and select appropriate plants at this series of workshops.

There are 4 different workshops offered in Santa Clara County this year:

• Bay-Friendly Gardening Basics
• Gardening from the Ground Up
• Gardening to Manage Pests Naturally
• Let Worms Eat Your Garbage

Workshop dates and details are listed below.

Please pre-register at www.BayFriendlyCoalition.org (workshops with low registration may be cancelled).

All Bay-Friendly Gardening workshops are FREE and include a Bay-Friendly Gardening book. Additional workshops are offered throughout the Bay Area, all workshops are listed on the coalition website.

Bay-Friendly Gardening Basics
Considering form and function before planting can save you time and resources. This workshop will provide an overview of design and maintenance considerations and practices that will help you make smart choices in your garden.

• Coming soon - please check back. 

Gardening from the Ground Up
Healthy soil is the foundation of a healthy garden. Understanding your soil will help you grow a blossoming garden this season and for seasons to come. Backyard composting, sheet mulching basics and other soil building techniques will be covered during this workshop.

• Coming soon - please check back. 

Gardening to Manage Pests Naturally
Control pests without the use of pesticides. Attract beneficial insects to your garden. Discover least-toxic methods for managing common garden pests such as snails, slugs, aphids, and yellow jackets.

• Coming soon - please check back

Let Worms Eat Your Garbage
Small on space and big on benefits – worm composting is a great way to recycle kitchen scraps into a fantastic organic fertilizer.

• Coming soon - please check back 

 
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The Sunnyvale Material and Recovery Transfer (SMaRT) Station in Sunnyvale offers ground greenwaste (not compost) at no charge. This material can be used as a mulch or compost feedstock. Call the SMaRT Station at (408) 752-8530 for additional information.

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Bay-Friendly Landscaping is designed for landscape professionals. It is a whole systems approach to the design, construction and maintenance of the landscape in order to support the San Francisco Bay watershed. A well-designed and maintained Bay-Friendly Landscape can cost less to maintain in the long run by consuming fewer resources. For public spaces, Bay-Friendly Landscapes embody community values for health, wildlife and the environment. For private property, Bay-Friendly landscaping addresses issues that your clients care about, such as lower water or garbage bills as well as increased environmental benefits.

As a landscape professional you can be proactive. You can be a part of the environmental solution. Bay-Friendly practices can give you a competitive edge in the market place by reducing water costs and landfill fees - while increasing the health of your client's landscape.

Click here to learn more about Bay-Friendly Landscaping.

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While creating and maintaining your own garden can be a satisfying experience, hiring help is sometimes a necessary fact of life. Bay-Friendly qualified landscape professionals include landscape designers and maintenance professionals. All qualified professionals have participated in a comprehensive training program and are enthused about offering a holistic approach to the management of your landscape. They have had the instruction to help them work with nature to reduce waste, conserve valuable resources, and prevent pollution – nurturing a landscape that is as healthy as it is beautiful!

Learn more at the Bay-Friendly Landscaping & Gardening Coalition’s website at www.BayFriendlyCoalition.org.

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The Bay-Friendly Landscaping & Gardening Regional Coalition is a membership organization comprised of individuals representing public agencies, businesses and non-profit organizations from all of the nine Bay Area counties working together to promote Bay-Friendly landscaping and gardening.

The Coalition builds on work done previously by StopWaste.org in Alameda County, providing resources such as trainings, workshops and publications for the both public and private sector landscape professionals and the home gardener. The Bay-Friendly educational materials were developed with guidance from public and private landscape architects and designers, contractors, representatives from Alameda County public agencies and staff of StopWaste.org. The Coalition is now working to provide these resources regionally.

Learn more about the Bay-Friendly Landscaping & Gardening Coalition at their website www.BayFriendlyCoalition.org.

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