Ocean Friendly Garden in Carlsbad

Description

We removed about 1000 sq ft of grass and installed a garden and gravel seating/fire pit area in our front yard. There is a retention system/dry creek bed that captures roof runoff from one downspout, and a rain barrel that captures from the other downspout. Currently, we water 2-3 times a week by hand.

1. Who did what

Trista Garcia did the site plan. All the rest we did ourselves: from rototilling the old turf to breaking up concrete to pouring pavers and spreading gravel. Surfrider-San Diego Chapter provided great guidance, specifically from John Kelly at KellyGreen Landscaping. And of course, Surfrider volunteers did all the planting and mulching on the workday.

2. What was involved

We had a quite dead front lawn, with some small patches of Bermuda grass and lots of dirt. We first rototilled the dirt and grass, and removed the top layer of roots and sod. We jackhammered the concrete walkway and removed the concrete, which we recycled into a drystacked retaining wall in the backyard. We then made new concrete pavers with space in between for filtration. We leveled the sitting/fire pit area and lay decomposed granite and compacted that. Then put down pea gravel on top, for a usuable space. The gravel and DG came from KRC Rock in San Marcos, and we rented big equipment from Home Depot. We probably spent a solid 4-6 weeks working whenever we could, between work and kids. And had great help from friends and family.

- The numbers

We estimate that we'll be able to capture 1000 gallons for one inch of rain. The size of the garden is about 1000 sq ft. We removed about 1000 sq ft of turf, and now have about 1/2 garden and 1/2 gravel sitting area. It has reduced our water bill by over half. Since installing the Ocean Friendly Garden, our water bill has remained the same, even though it's watered a few times a week.