Date: Sunday, February 16, 2025.
The stormwater eddy basins (each having over 4,500-gallon annual capacity) were just completed – so now we can plant. Got to plant the rain before we plant the plants!
Time: 9:00 am for a planting demonstration, then keep going to various parts of the neighborhood. The demonstration will show you how to plant the rain to maximize its potential, how to plant food-bearing native trees by seed and/or with nursery stock to maximize passive summer shading/cooling, and how to recycle/plant prunings and leaves as fertility-building, carbon-sequestering, pollutant-filtering, water-harvesting mulch.
End time of noon is approximate (with a good showing of folks we’ll likely finish up early).
Cost: FREE—plus your planting help
Meeting spot:
SW corner of 1st Street and 5th Avenue (945 N. 5th Ave)
All six basins are next to one another on 1st Street between 5th Ave and N Arizona Avenue.
Come join us in planting native shade trees, understory vegetation, wildflowers, and seed within or beside water-harvesting earthworks in the public rights-of-way. The idea is to plant native food-producing, flood-controlling, wildlife-habitat-producing, beautiful, air- and water-filtering, living air conditioners. Street trees that shade up to 75% of the street’s surface can also cool summer neighborhood temperatures by up to 20ºF.
This enhances the walkability and bikeability of our neighborhoods, which improves health and drops crime. When we harvest street runoff to irrigate the street trees, we reduce water consumption as we reduce downstream flooding we naturally bioremediate/filter pollutants, and help indirectly and directly recharge our groundwater. Thus far this annual event has resulted in over 1,700 trees being planted in our neighborhood/waterhood, thousands of understory plants, and contributed to annually harvesting over one million gallons of stormwater that used to go to the stormdrain—let’s keep going!
Thanks to Little John Excavating for doing the basin excavation, Churchman Sand & Gravel for the catalina granite rock, and Dryland Design for doing the excellent rockwork.
What to bring: Work clothes, sun hat, gloves, and water as we’ll be working outdoors. A pointed shovel, pruning tools, and/or hard rake would also be great (and we’ll have some extra tools on hand for those lacking them).
