Orange County's largest California Friendly ® demonstration garden.

What's New:

• Friends of Coastkeeper Garden: February 27 CANCELLED due to rain forecasts. Our next volunteer days are March 13 & 27
• Latest updates:
  • December 2009: Coastkeeper started construction on the amphitheater and three vignettes!
  • November 2009: We hydroseeded the grassland habitat with native wildflowers and bunchgrasses, and volunteers helped us put over three hundred plants in the coastal sage scrub and chapparal habitats.

Background

The 2 acre Coastkeeper Garden will be located at Santiago Canyon College in the City of Orange. This unique, sustainable garden will host plants from six southern California native habitats as well as California Friendly ® plants from around the world. The Master Plan incorporates six California Friendly ® vignettes (garden rooms) into “backyard” landscapes that harmonize with the native plant habitat throughout the Garden.

• Why? Urban landscapes contribute significantly to coastal pollution mainly through inappropriate gardening practices such as over-watering, poor run-off management, and over-use of pesticides and fertilizers. The California Friendly ® and native plants featured at Coastkeeper Garden will require less water, fertilizers, and herbicides than our typical landscaping choices. The Garden will also highlight new and improved technologies that decrease water use such as ET controllers, drip irrigation, synthetic turf, and reservoir style patio containers. Other Garden features include:                
  • Extensive signage                           
  • Children's interactive trail            
  • Amphitheater
  • Organic garden                
  • Take-home literature             
  • Greenhouse                     
  • Gardening classes            
  • Composting display           
  • Guided tours
• Education: A wealth of educational opportunity exists at Coastkeeper Garden.  The purpose of the Garden is to teach youths and citizens the importance of individual stewardship in protecting our natural resources. Activities will range from field trips for school children on field trips to college research projects, to drought tolerant landscape demonstrations, to classes on local natural history.

Vision:

According to the California Urban Water Conservation Council (2005), demonstration gardens “increase the public’s awareness of the importance of landscape water use efficiency and inspire them to action.”   Our vision is that Garden visitors will adopt a new gardening culture. Our sustainable Garden will: promote self-sufficiency with regard to materials and maintenance, increase public access to open space and gathering places; increase urban canopy cover and ecological habitats; reconnect residents to our native habitats; and create new standards for aesthetic and landscape management in parks and urban landscapes.

Our Objectives:

• Preserve our Natural Heritage- As Orange County moves closer to build-out, native species of plants, birds, butterflies, and wildlife will be impacted negatively. Local residents will become more disconnected from the natural local environment. The Garden will increase public awareness of the importance of preserving our native habitats by representing them in a public garden. It is our hope that garden visitors will encourage their public leaders to use public space to preserve our natural heritage.

• Promote Drought Tolerant Landscaping- Over fifty percent of Orange County’s water use is outdoors, including parks, urban lawns and golf courses.  As options for increasing imported water supplies dwindle, residents will need to adopt a conservation lifestyle to meet future water needs. Experts agree that outdoor use can be reduced up to forty percent with proper irrigation technology and drought tolerant plants. Coastkeeper Gardens will offer practical landscaping advice on how residents and public agencies can significantly reduce their water use.

• Reduce Urban Runoff- Inefficient landscape water use generates urban runoff that pollutes our waterways and coastal areas. Beach postings and closures due to bacterial laden urban runoff have plagued Orange County for years. Volunteers and visitors to the Garden will learn how their current behaviors could be negatively impacting our coast and corrective actions that can be taken to improve the environment.