Massive mulch project provides drought relief

Billed as the largest lawn transformation on record, the Mulchstock event replaced 64,000 square feet of thirsty lawn in a Petaluma office park with drought-tolerant material.|

In an event that was part party, part major landscaping overhaul, around 150 volunteers showed up last weekend to help transform 64,000 square feet of thirsty lawn at Petaluma’s Redwood Business Park into drought-friendly mulch.

Dubbed Mulchstock, the Saturday event combined live music, food and a festival atmosphere with a labor-intensive sheet mulching project that will save an estimated 1.6 million gallons of water every year, said Carolyn Pistone, president of Clear Blue Commercial, the property manager. The project involved a drip-style irrigation system installed along with interspersed layers of cardboard, compost and mulch, all of which will support the expected installation of drought-resistant plants in the spring of 2016.

The large-scale turf conversion was originally valued around $250,000, Pistone said, which would have made it a harder sell for property owners Colony Realty Partners. Yet the participation of volunteers and donation of materials brought those costs down to $75,000, allowing a quicker return on investment while resulting in an immediate reduction in water use.

“It was a win-win-win,” said Pistone, adding that it combines economic incentive, community impact and environmental benefits.

The city of Petaluma supplied mulch for the effort through its Mulch Madness program, which provides free materials to both businesses and residents embarking on sheet mulching projects within the city. Other participating organizations included the Sonoma County Water Agency and the landscaping company Cagwin & Dorward.

Such turf conversations and other efforts around limiting outdoor irrigation have been increasingly popular due to California’s ongoing drought, viewed as a significant way most property owners can decrease their level of water use.

Petaluma is among the cities that have issued limits on when most residents and business can water their lawns, a local example of the rules that have emerged due to a statewide emergency mandate under Gov. Jerry Brown. Combined with the voluntary cutbacks by residents and businesses, Petaluma is 11.8 percent ahead of the 25 percent reduction target compared to 2013, according to the most recent data from the California State Water Resources Control Board.

While those drought-related rules are considered temporary, the benefits of sheet mulching will extend beyond the current dry period to help during periods of rain, said Trathen Heckman, executive director of Daily Acts.

The “sheet” in sheet mulch refers to the sheets of permeable organic material, in this case, cardboard, sandwiched between a lower layer of compost and an upper layer of mulch. The approach keeps down weeds and keeps in moisture, allowing low-maintenance and water-efficient landscaping without the removal of existing soil, he said.

“Let’s have a strategy that allows you to conserve water when it’s dry and retain water when it’s wet,” said Heckman, whose organization has worked with the city of Petaluma and others on water conservation programs for several years.

Heckman said Petaluma has become a hotbed for the practice.

“Sheet mulching has just become the thing that you do, whether you’re a homeowner or a business,” he said. “Here, we’ve hit a cultural tipping point.”

Outside of Petaluma’s Mulch Madness program has replaced 427,900 square feet of lawn in 2015, saving around 10.7 million gallons of water every year, said Leah Walker, Petaluma’s environmental services manager. The program has replaced a total of 1.3 million square feet of lawn since its inception in 2010, saving a total of 32 million gallons each year.

Mulchstock’s organizers said they could find no evidence of a larger one-day turf conversion anywhere, and that the Sunday event likely broke records well beyond Petaluma.

The vacant commercial building at the site is also undergoing a number of improvements to increase the energy efficiency of lighting and other systems, Pistone said. Allianz, the German insurance company which acquired Novato-based Fireman’s Fund in the early 1990s, will relocate to now-vacant commercial building in November.

With that arrival looming, Pistone, whose company promotes sustainability-minded work for the properties it manages, said there was a window for embarking on the landscaping project and other improvements. The volunteer-driven Mulchstock approach could serve as a model for other large commercial property conversions in the future, she said.

“It’s a really nice opportunity to take a vacant space and turn it into something that can serve as a model for sustainability,” she said.

(Contact Eric Gneckow at eric.gneckow@arguscourier.com. On Twitter @Eric_Reports.)

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