Trainings & Resources
ReScape California Workshops and Qualification Trainings for Landscape Professionals
Reduced Cost Trainings for Alameda County Public Agencies
StopWaste offers partial scholarships for ReScape California trainings for employees of its Member Agencies (the County of Alameda, the 14 cities in the county, and two sanitary districts). The scholarship provides a tuition offset and reduces course price significantly. Check out ReScape's upcoming classes here and apply for a StopWaste scholarship here.
StopWaste's WELO Enforcement Training Materials
Click here for materials from StopWaste's past WELO Enforcement Training webinar.
Carbon Farming
Video: Carbon Farming in the Altamont Hills: One Public Agency's Experience. Watch StopWaste Program Manager Kelly Schoonmaker's presentation on the agency's carbon farming project on its rangeland property (starts at minute 36).
Related Resources
The Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance is a statewide water conservation law for new and renovated landscapes that meet a certain size threshold.
StopWaste has developed a WELO Tool Kit to help its member agencies implement the ordinance. The Tool Kit consists of model checklists, a water budget/water use calculator, and a permit counter brochure.
Public agencies can use these materials as is or modify them to meet local requirements.
Landscape Professionals: Find resources about sheet mulch, compost and mulch at the Lawn to Garden website, including an up-to-date directory of dozens of Bay Area sources for bulk compost, mulch and sheet mulch materials.
Healthy soils have come to the forefront in the last few years as a means to address climate mitigation and adaptation. This StopWaste report proposes nearly 50 measures addressing how soils, compost, and mulch can be incorporated into climate adaptation plans.
This 68-page publication is written for the professional landscape industry. It presents guidance, best practices and resources for the design, construction and maintenance of high performance landscapes.
The Mulch Guide (available in English and Spanish) has detailed information about using mulch to save money, control weeds, and create healthy landscapes. It includes information on types of mulch and how to use them successfully, sample maintenance specifications, information about using mulch for erosion control, photos of mulch installations and more.
This guide explains how to reduce waste and create beautiful landscapes using salvaged and recycled-content materials. It includes types and sources of materials as well as a section on using “urbanite” to build benches, garden walls and more. Although it was written for landscape professionals, it contains useful information for home gardeners.
The City of Hayward's Route 238 Capital Improvement Project is the biggest Bay-Friendly Rated Landscape to date. This project, which includes nearly seven acres of irrigated medians and other landscaping, was designed to save more than two million gallons of water annually. Download the two-page case study to learn more.
The Casitas Alameda Homeowners Association, a community of more than 400 homes, used sheet mulch to replace a large swath of lawn with colorful, climate-appropriate plants. The new landscape is expected to use two-thirds less water than the lawn.
Learn how the City of Pleasanton used sheet mulch to convert a lawn along Main Street to a Bay-Friendly landscape that is saving as much as 384,000 gallons of water annually. Sheet mulching the lawn instead of excavating it kept 16.5 tons of turf out of the landfill. The new no-mow landscape looks great, costs less to maintain, and provides bird and pollinator habitat and other benefits.
Read about the City of Alameda Housing Authority's renovation of the landscaping at Independence Plaza, a 186-unit affordable housing complex for seniors. Labor- and water-intensive turf and lagoons were replaced with a no-mow landscape featuring California native plants. The changes are saving 1.3 million gallons of water and reducing maintenance costs by $12,000 annually.
Learn how the Harbor Bay Median relandscaping project in Alameda used sheet mulch to replace 2.5 acres of conventional grass medians with a Bay-Friendly landscape that enhances the spectacular shoreline setting. Sheet mulching the median turf instead of excavating it kept 221 tons of turf out of the landfill.The new landscape has saved more than 9 million gallons of water in three years.