The Ojai Garden

Volunteers staffed a booth in the Going Green area at Ojai Day on Saturday, October 15th. The display was designed to provide information about alternatives to a typical lawn. Lawns require a lot of water and maintenance, and are the reason many homeowners use fungicides, pesticides, herbicides, and nitrate fertilizers that pollute our waterways.
Several different lawn alternatives were presented, such as native meadows, greenswards of native grasses, succulent gardens, herb gardens, and edible landscaping. Landscape designer Kathy Nolan was kind enough to lend us her plan for a suburban edible landscape, which provided a myriad of ideas for visitors to the booth.
Landscape designer and garden educator Kate Riley stopped by to sit at our table and answer questions about native grasses and meadows.

Herbalist Carol Wade was on hand to answer questions about growing herbs.

Many people stopped by the display throughout the day. Visitors to the booth went home with a packet of California poppy seeds to plant this winter.
Photos by Les Dublin.