Sebastopol Civic Gardeners sets out to spruce up city-owned properties
Sebastopol Civic Gardeners sets out to spruce up city-owned properties
Intent on improving Sebastopol's civic spaces, Sebastopol Civic Gardeners takes on its first projects
Sebastopol Civic Gardeners is a new group in Sebastopol devoted to sprucing up city-owned properties around town that need a little or a lot of love.
The group was founded by, um, yours truly in October of this year, via posts on two Facebook groups, Sonoma County Gardeners and What’s Up Sebastopol, and in the events section of the Sebastopol Times.
More than 25 people wrote to express their interest in being involved, and a hardy core group of six or seven, including City Councilmember Stephen Zollman, attended the first two (very short) meetings at the Sebastopol Library.
This last weekend, the group did its first project, sprucing up the Welcome to Sebastopol sign at the north end of town and adding what we hope will be a bit of color to the landscaping come spring time.
We will be tackling the area around the Welcome to Sebastopol sign on the eastern entrance to the city on Nov. 18.
The city’s Adopt-a-Landscape program
One of the things that made it easy to get off the mark so quickly was that the city already had a program in place—Adopt-a-Landscape—to do exactly what we were interested in doing: volunteering to landscape and maintain city properties.
Public Works Director Dante Del Prete brought the Adopt-a-Landscape program with him when he came to Sebastopol from the city of Novato lo these many moons ago. He and then-City-Councilmember Craig Litwin took what they liked from Novato’s Adopt-a-Landscape program and adapted it to Sebastopol.
Del Prete said that several individuals and organizations have participated in the city’s Adopt-a-Landscape program over the years, including Sunrise Rotary, Solful, the Sebastopol Kiwanis, Dan and Sarah Gurney, Pack 128 Cub Scouts, and many others.
How it works
The city has a list of city-owned properties that are available to be “adopted.” The city asks that people working on city properties fill out liability waivers and submit simple landscape plans. (“It doesn’t have to be formal,” Del Prete said. “Seriously, back of a napkin will work.”) The city also offers a list of suggested plants that volunteer landscapers might want to use, but you are not limited to those.
Here is the list of city properties available for “adoption”:
Del Prete said he normally asks people to make a two-year commitment to maintaining their plot, but says that’s negotiable.
The city has also offered to provide compost and mulch for Sebastopol Civic Gardeners’ landscaping efforts.
“We’ll do everything we can to help make this successful,” he said.
Want to join or help Sebastopol Civic Gardeners?
There are a couple of ways to be involved in Sebastopol Civic Gardeners:
You can sign up to adopt and maintain a specific city-owned plot by yourself through Sebastopol Civic Gardeners or you can join in and help with our communal plantings. I thought more people would be interested in the first option, but it was clear from our meetings at the library that most people preferred the more communal approach. Both options are still available, however. To find out more or to be added to the Sebastopol Civic Gardeners email list, contact Laura Hagar Rush at hagarlaura@gmail.com.
You can donate native and/or drought-tolerant plants to be included in our volunteer landscaping efforts. Contact Laura Hagar Rush at hagarlaura@gmail.com or just drop them off on the table on the front porch of Sebastopol Times office at 524 South Main St., Sebastopol.
