Montgomery Waller Park - San Diego, California

Description

A private water retailer named California American Water (Cal Am) approached the Surfrider-San Diego Chapter's Ocean Friendly Gardens Program about helping turn a water guzzling area of Montgomery-Waller Park and its runoff-producing parking lot into an example of an Ocean Friendly Garden. Cal Am provides water to the Park. Patrick Pilz, Cal Am’s Field Operations Manager, is familiar with Surfrider: he is part of a team implementing a state grant-funded sustainable landscape program, and the team includes Surfrider, another non-profit, and several government agencies such as the City and County of San Diego. The Chapter jumped at the chance to do a project at such a high profile, public space. They had already helped successfully retrofitted half-a-dozen residential landscapes in their region over the past five years.

Water from the turf grass and rainwater runoff from the parking lot had been directed to the street, down a storm drain and directly to the ocean, carrying all pollutants along with it. The vision was to replace 2,000 square feet of grass with an OFG, and direct runoff from the parking lot to it through a cut in the curb.
The public was told about the project and encouraged to participate when they attended a garden class. The retrofit of the park was accomplished through a series of three Hands-On Workshops (H.O.W.) lead by G3/Green Gardens Group.

Diane Downey (G3’s San Diego Regional Coordinator) and Jeremy Sison (G3 certified pro, and landscape architect) led the workshops. They are also both Surfrider-San Diego OFG Committee members. Surfrider-San Diego Committee members also helped publicize the class and HOWs, and Cal Am created a cool all-in-one flyer for the events. Cal Am took care of H.O.W. registration and food for H.O.W. volunteers.
The first H.O.W. was on Site Evaluation, the second on turf removal and soil building through sheet mulching and rain capture, and the third on planting and irrigation.
The City Parks Department helped with site prep, removing the grass and cutting the curb. The project team learned that the water was not infiltrating well enough, so a follow-up H.O.W. was conducted to drill a dozen holes (aka augering) in the basin, back-filling with compost tea and mulch, then installing water-loving plants in the basin.

Cal Am picked up the bill for the H.O.W.s as well as compensated the City to cover the materials and site prep. Additional funding came from the project qualifying for the regional turf replacement rebate of $2/square foot.
Check out this awesome video and time-lapse of the project! Chapters can post it on their website to explain OFG: