Water District Funds Low Water Use Renovation of Schoolyard

Last spring, the San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District made a $75,000 grant to Pasadena Unified School District  to fund a water conservation demonstration garden in Sierra Madre. The project, located in front of Sierra Madre Elementary at 141 W. Highland Ave., will provide an up-close and personal look for local students and community residents at ways to use much less irrigation water, while still maintaining beautiful, healthy and verdant landscaping.

After the project is fully installed, it will also become an outdoor classroom for the school and the community to learn about using less water.

"The expansive front lawn area of the historic site at SME provided the perfect 'low water usage' demonstration project for the community," said Tom Love, a Sierra Madre resident and board member of SGVMD, which provides water service to Sierra Madre, Azusa and Monterey Park. "SME is located on one of the largest land parcels in town, and [is] therefore one of the biggest landscape water users in town. Their front lawn is a very visible site for us to show off how to reduce water usage dramatically. It was a win-win."

The school district gratefully accepted the grant and agreed to provide "in kind" support and to oversee the project, assigning a PUSD  "owner representative" manager, to the project. Significant contributions came in funding and in-kind donations from SME parents, teachers and administrators, the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wildflowers and Native Plants and the City of Sierra Madre. The city, for instance, was able to bring in tons of boulders to anchor the new landscape design.

The new design will make use of low-water sod in the lawn, which is reduced by 20%. Parents and PUSD staff agreed that the school still needed a grass area for outdoor events as well as for a waiting area for children during school drop-off and pickup. The school will be able to control its watering (and save money) with a new efficient irrigation system.

More water will be used to establish the landscaping in its first three years, but after that, the xeriscape plants will be able to flower and survive pretty much on natural rainfall. The key has been to make use of indigenous native California plants, which go dormant in the summer and bloom during the wetter months of winter.

SME parents such as Amy Whist--who already leads the native plant and agave garden projects at SME--and Karen Walker, a landscape professional, along with the Payne Foundation, have advised on the project.

Like ants at a picnic, workers installed the new low-water sod in the weeks before school started. It was finished on Sept. 10, just three days before the start of school.

In the midst of all the hubbub of tractors and workers, Principal Gayle Bluemel laughed, saying she lives with a contractor and was accustomed to the activity during a construction project. "It's not a mess," she said with a laugh. "It's progress!"

For the most current look at the status of SME's "Conserve, Preserve and Restore" project, take a look at SME's Water Conservation and Education Project Link.