“This is the best day ever! Are you coming back tomorrow?” a young boy beamed as he stood in a brand-new water-wise, edible and habitat-providing garden that he helped design, prepare and plant with his parents and neighbors.
In January of 2020, Daily Acts kicked off a project with the residents of Carrillo Place Apartments, a Burbank Housing Community in Roseland, Santa Rosa. Carrillo Place houses about 200 residents: 90% identify as Latinx and more than half the people who live there are children. Made possible with a grant from Bay Area Air Quality Management District, our goal was to work in partnership with the community at Carrillo Place to improve air quality, climate resiliency, water efficiency, and community flourishing by transforming a previously bare landscape.
The journey began with two bilingual community listening sessions (Session 1, Session 2); community members of all ages joined us for pizza dinners and to talk about garden design. People shared their visions for the space, examples of plants they would love to have growing in the garden, and their enthusiasm and appreciation for being involved in the design process. Next, Daily Acts crafted a design for the garden based on the community’s input. The energy was so high for volunteer sheet mulching and planting days – and then COVID hit.
While the pandemic delayed our timeline and made it more challenging to engage with the community safely, by November 2021 we were able to reconvene the families of Carrillo Place to install 126 water-wise plants and scatter countless wildflower seeds throughout their new garden space, all watered by a new drip irrigation system.
The day was filled with laughter, shrieks of delight and moments of distilled wonder as children discovered hundreds of earthworms living in the soil and learned about the way plants clean our air. There were dirty hands and happy hearts. We hope the kids will look upon the garden – full of pollinators, beautiful blooms, food and fragrances – with pride as they grow up alongside it.
With Omicron came a final curveball. Our final workday was going to be a hands-on educational workshop on installing a Blue Barrel Systems rainwater harvesting system, but we and Burbank Housing agreed to prioritize the health and safety of the community, cancel the event, and have Daily Acts staff complete the install on our own. While we were sad to lose an opportunity to spend time with and learn alongside our friends at Carrillo Place, we were happy to leave them with 550 gallons worth of rainwater catchment and storage to water their garden.
We can’t wait to watch the garden grow, and the community strengthen and grow their sense of place alongside it.
