Did you know that...?...a 1,000 square foot lawn in San Diego (that's about a 50'x20' area) uses about 25,ooo gallons of water every year? (That's 400,000 8 ounce glasses of water or enough drinking water for one person to have 8 8oz glasses a day for the next 136 years.)
...60% of the water we put into the average landscape turns into runoff? In the above garden that's about 15,000 gallons of water annually that runs onto the street and into our gutters, picking up pollutants along the way and bringing them straight to the ocean.
...the average irrigation spray head has only a 55% efficiency rating (that means only half of the water that comes out of the head actually ends up on the landscape)!
...60% of all fertilizers and pesticides used in the garden end up in our groundwater and watersheds? (not to mention the pollution generated by traditional lawncare techniques and fossil fuels used to create and ship the fertilizers and pesticides)
Those are some pretty scary numbers and that's just the tip of the iceberg. But there are solutions to these problems! 
We can reduce water use in our landscapes by over 70%.
We can eliminate landscape runoff from our landscaped areas or at the very least make sure that that water is cleaned of pollutants before it is allowed into our watersheds.
We can use organic methods to feed the soil and create a healthy living environment for plants eliminating the need for fertilizers and pesticides.
We can do all this and more while saving water, saving money, and saving our local heritage and environment.
These solutions are the focus of our Ocean Friendly Garden program and we invite you and your friends, neighbors, local nurserypeople, and many more to join us for our next workshop series which starts next Tuesday evening in Encinitas!
For more information and to sign up for the series please check out the Ocean Friendly Gardens Program webite and our San Diego Chapter OFG Blog
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