Need Professional Help with Your Landscape?
Bay-Friendly Qualified Professionals are trained in leading-edge sustainable landscape practices that can save money, reduce toxic chemical use, and increase the value and appeal of residential and commercial properties.
Bay-Friendly Gardening Guide: From Your Backyard to the Bay
This 70+ page guide is written for the home gardener and provides how-to information, a design survey, profiles of East Bay gardens, and much more.
Bay-Friendly Landscape Guidelines: Sustainable Practices for the Landscape Professional
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.
Using Mulch
The Bay-Friendly Landscape Guidelines recommend protecting all planting areas with a minimum of 3 inches of mulch.
California's Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance (WELO) now requires the use of compost and mulch on permitted landscapes. Find out more.
Making Compost on Site
The Bay-Friendly Landscape Guidelines recommend setting up a method for producing compost on site from plant debris, food scraps and other compostable material.
Using Compost
The Bay-Friendly Landscape Guidelines recommend incorporating quality compost into the soil at a rate sufficient to bring the soil organic matter content to 3.5% to 5% by dry weight.
California's Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance (WELO) now requires the use of compost on permitted landscapes. Find out more.
Right Plant Right Place
When Paul Cannon and Hugo Campos were thinking of moving to Oakland, it was four towering coastal redwood trees that finally convinced them to put down an offer on a house. They have fond memories of entering the home’s garden gate and looking skyward in amazement at the grove of trees that loomed over the 4,500-square foot lot. Not having even stepped inside the house, “they were already sold.”
More than 1,300 Landscape Professionals Are Bay-Friendly Qualified
Since 2007, the Bay-Friendly Training & Qualification program has graduated more than 1,300 experienced Bay-Friendly Qualified Landscape professionals who are putting high performance landscape practices to work every day.
Sara Conner Court Apartments, Hayward, CA
Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Station No. 4: Pleasanton, CA
The City of Pleasanton's Fire Station No. 4 was the first LEED-certified emergency services building in Alameda County, and at the time of construction in 2005 had the highest LEED rating in the nation for an emergency services building. It was also the first property to earn the Bay-Friendly Rated Landscape designation.
Click the Download button for a detailed case study (PDF).