What: Cleo Woelfle-Erskine gives a public talk on his new book: Creating Rain Gardens
Where: L.A Eco-Village (directions)
When: Friday, September 14, 2012 at 7:30 pm
Learn how to collect rain to reuse in your front or backyard, and help keep pollutants out of the L.A. River and the ocean in the process. Water conservation expert Cleo Woelfle-Erskine will talk about his new book, Creating Rain Gardens, covering everything from rain barrels to simple living roofs, permeable patios, and other low-tech affordable ways to save water in the garden. From Puget Sound to the Kansas prairie to the Chesapeake bay, communities are installing thousands of rain gardens and rain cisterns as part of watershed restoration projects. These integrated urban waterscapes can be an alternative expanding dams, desalination plants, and sewer systems. Creating Rain Gardens walks gardeners through the process of building a rain garden, with step-by-step instructions for designing and building swales, French drains, rain gardens, and ephemeral ponds—the building blocks of rain-harvesting gardens. From soil preparation, planting, troubleshooting, and maintenance, to selecting palettes of water-loving plants that provide all-season interest and a habitat for wildlife, Creating Rain Gardens covers everything a gardener needs to create a beautiful rain garden at home. Copies of the book will be available to purchase.
About Cleo
Cleo Woelfle-Erskine is a hydrologist, educator, and scholar of water. He co-founded the Greywater Guerrillas, and has led dozen of community-based workshops on rainwater harvesting and greywater reuse across North America. His writing on dam remova environmental justice, and urban gardening has appeared in High Country News and Yes, among other magazines, and in the anthologies Urban Wilds and Dam Nation. An avid gardener, Cleo is also pursuing a PhD in the Energy and Resources group at UC Berkeley where he is investigating how rainwater harvesting affects streamflow.
Sponsored by Urban Soil/Tierra Urbana limited equity housing co-op, the Beverly-Vermont
Community Land Trust and CRSP Institute for Urban Ecovillages.