Reducing Barriers to Re-Building

In 2019 Daily Acts received grant funding to support fire recovery efforts. The 2017 North Bay Wildfires were the deadliest in California history, destroying close to 3,000 homes in Santa Rosa alone, roughly 5% of its housing. Many households were significantly under-insured and faced increased costs for rebuilding and landscaping.

To reduce some of the barriers to re-building that Santa Rosa residents were experiencing, Daily Acts collaborated with community partners to create Landscape Design Templates. These templates were then used for a community installation project in Coffey Park, where four families received a front-yard landscape that also serve as demonstration gardens for the Landscape Design Templates.

Landscape Design Templates

Daily Acts collaborated with the Sonoma-Marin Saving Water PartnershipAnn Baker Landscape Architecture and other local landscape architects to create eight landscape design templates. In addition to collaborating to create the templates, Daily Acts also co-hosted a series of community input sessions to discuss landscaping in the rebuild, and how to scale and substitute plants in the templates.

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These free landscape design templates for front yards are scalable to fit landscaped areas up to 2,500 square feet, ready-to-permit, and in compliance with local Water Efficient Landscape Ordinances. There are 8 different landscape design templates available! For more information about architectural renderings, concept plans and downloadable versions of the landscape templates, please go to the Sonoma-Marin Saving Water Partnership website.

Coffey Park Landscape Installations

In an effort to affect greater change and inspire community, Daily Acts worked with four homeowners in Coffey Park to install the landscape templates in their front yards. One of each template – Sonoma Native/Adaptive, Sonoma Eco-Edible, Sonoma Contemporary, and Sonoma Cottage – were installed to serve as future demonstration sites. Homeowners had the unique opportunity to receive a water-wise, habitat-providing landscape free of installation cost with the help of local experts and volunteers.

Daily Acts staff became trained template advisors, and hosted a series of programs to educate rebuilders on how to incorporate various sustainable landscape elements including rainwater capture and graywater reuse. Hard-line irrigation was installed in a bilingual workshop with a Sonoma County Adult Education class, where students were given a hands-on opportunity to learn about building out an irrigation system from scratch. On October 12th 2019, 65 volunteers came together to sheet mulch, plant, and lay out drip irrigation at all four sites in one afternoon! Check out the video from the day of the installation by News of the North Bay.