Daily Acts is Transforming the Landscape of Our Community
BY SARINA CONSULTER | PHOTOS BY DREA CASALI
March 1, 2025 | East Petaluma Living Featured Story
When a yard is transformed from a lawn into a vibrant oasis with a meandering rain garden, fruit trees, and flowers that attract butterflies and buzzing bees— it’s captivating. Neighbors walking by take notice and stop to ask about the beautiful new garden and what inspired the change.
In a fast-moving world, where uniqueness and details are lost to convenience, this moment of curiosity and wonder is what catalyzes change. Petaluma-based environmental education nonprofit Daily Acts isn’t just removing lawns. They are transforming the landscape of our community.
Daily Acts shares practical skills and inspiring models that highlight affordable solutions for saving water, building community resilience, and slowing down the impacts of climate change— all through the power of our collective daily actions. For 23 years, Daily Acts has been a leader in sustainability and climate action, working with local governments to enact bold climate policy and spread hands-on solutions such as planting gardens and installing water conservation measures.
Creating Climate Resilience in Petaluma
After receiving grant funding from the California Department of Water Resources to support community-based drought resilience, Daily Acts brought the Land Resilience Partnership (LRP) Program to Petaluma in 2023 to make water-conservation projects like greywater and rain catchment systems, rain gardens, and lawn conversions more accessible to Petaluma residents. Through this pilot program, the organization will complete 60 installations and 125 landscape designs by 2026. Program participants receive free designs, free labor for installation, and pay low or no cost for materials.
Since launching the program, twenty six landscape conversions have been completed, resulting in almost a million gallons of water savings per year— but benefits of these projects go beyond just reducing water-use. Dried up lawns and woody hedges are transformed into climate-resilient gardens that bring interest and beauty to our neighborhoods. These gardens increase habitat, reduce urban heat with shade trees, recharge groundwater, and increase the soil’s ability to store water and carbon, increasing drought and climate resilience.
Volunteers from World Centric helping with garden maintenance at Miwok Park
Additionally, these projects offer participants an affordable opportunity to refresh outdated landscapes and address problems caused by a lack of stormwater management on their properties. “Working with Daily Acts was amazing from start to finish… They were able to connect the gutters from our backyard to drain the water into our front yard, so we’re saving water and they solved the problem we had of the rain going underneath our house and flooding our backyard. Last winter, with all the rain we had, [the rain garden] was beautiful,” shared Courtenay Wise, an installation recipient in East Petaluma.
This yard transformation at Courtenay’s in East Petaluma included
sheet mulching, a rain garden with climate-appropriate plantings, and drip irrigation
In addition to transforming residential landscapes, Daily Acts continues to bring beauty and uniqueness to Petaluma’s public spaces. While the organization already has existing demonstration gardens at City Hall, the Cavanagh Center, and behind the Petaluma Regional Library, through the LRP program Daily Acts installed two new gardens at Miwok Park and La Tercera Park last year.
Two more Petaluma parks are slated to receive demonstration gardens this year, with potential projects including lawn conversions, rain gardens, climate appropriate plantings, and pollinator corridors. Daily Acts will be hosting community input sessions to learn more about what neighbors and frequent park goers hope to see included in these installations.
If tending to beautiful gardens, making new connections with your neighbors, and growing your climate-resilience skills sounds fun and exciting to you – join the Daily Acts community! With regular volunteer opportunities available like the Garden Stewards Club, and corporate volunteering and planting days throughout the year, there are many ways to get involved and plant seeds of change in Petaluma and beyond. Visit www.dailyacts.org to learn more, and sign up for their newsletter to be the first to hear about their free educational talks, tours, and workshops.
Daily Acts is accepting residential applications for the Land Resilience Partnership Program through April 30th of this year. Learn more and apply at www.dailyacts.org/lrp.
Click on the images below to learn more about these projects:
Daily Acts’ team members Morgan and Cody placing plants at Miwok School
Volunteers helping to plant the rain garden at Miwok Park
Students at La Tercera School working together to help plant their new garden
Petaluma Library Demonstration Garden in full bloom