Sustainable Solano: Growing Futures in Benicia & Vallejo
By Sustainable Solano
TL;DR: Sustainable Solano offers a variety of permaculture education and hands-on experiences, including design courses, food forest tours, and resources for eco-friendly landscaping.
- Learn permaculture design in urban and suburban settings.
- Tour thriving food forests and demonstration gardens.
- Discover water-wise landscaping, including lawn removal and rebates.
- Implement permaculture principles for high-yield, low-maintenance systems.
- Connect with community-driven permaculture initiatives and support succession.
Why it matters: These programs provide practical knowledge and inspiration for creating resilient and productive landscapes, fostering community and environmental health.
Do this next: Explore Sustainable Solano's website for upcoming tours and courses, or local rebate programs for sustainable landscaping.
Recommended for: Anyone in urban or suburban settings looking to learn and implement practical permaculture solutions for sustainable living.
The 'What's Growing?' blog from Sustainable Solano serves as a hub for permaculture enthusiasts, featuring upcoming design courses starting in August 2025, annual food forest garden tours in Benicia and Vallejo for 2024 and 2025, demonstration gardens, and resources on sustainable landscaping such as lawn removal with rebate incentives. These events and courses provide hands-on learning opportunities for implementing permaculture in urban and suburban settings, focusing on food forests that mimic natural ecosystems for low-maintenance, high-yield production. The blog highlights demonstration sites showcasing layered plantings, water-wise designs, and native integrations that enhance biodiversity and resilience. Lawn removal guides emphasize converting turf to edible landscapes using permaculture zones, starting with observation of sun, water, and wind patterns before planting guilds of trees, shrubs, herbs, and groundcovers. Rebate programs make these transitions accessible, covering costs for mulch, plants, and irrigation upgrades. The 2025 tours offer insights into mature systems with fruit trees, berries, and perennials producing abundantly year-round. Courses cover ethics like earth care, people care, and fair share, alongside principles such as relative location and biological resources. This content underscores community-driven permaculture adoption in Solano County, promoting tours as educational field trips to observe succession, pest management via diversity, and soil regeneration through composting and mulching. By showcasing real-world examples, the blog inspires scalable home designs, from small backyard food forests to larger community gardens. Integration of annuals in no-dig beds alongside perennials ensures immediate harvests while building long-term fertility. Sustainable landscaping tips include swales for water retention, sheet mulching to suppress grass, and companion planting for natural pest control. The forward-looking calendar, including 2025 events, positions this as a vital resource for ongoing education and networking in permaculture practices.