City of Pittsburg
Home MenuProfessional Native Landscaping Best Practices
As a landscape professional, using native Pittsburg friendly practices can give you a competitive edge in the market. Native landscapes are not only healthy, beautiful, and vibrant, they cost less to water and maintain than a non-native garden giving your clients a huge savings in time and money.
Benefits:
- Landscaping in harmony with the natural conditions of our area and watershed
- Reducing waste and recycling material
- Nurturing healthy soils and reducing fertilizer use
- Conserving water, energy, and top soil
- Using integrated pest management (IPM) to minimize chemical use
- Reducing stormwater runoff
- Creating a wildlife habitat
Practices and Plant Selection:
Native Pittsburg and Bay Area friendly landscaping practices involve an integrated approach to environmentally friendly landscaping. Selecting the right plants to use in your client's garden is a critical part of this process. It is important to choose plants which will fit best in a particular micro-climate such that there is waste reduction, minimal water requirements, a match in soil conditions, natural pest management, and wildlife habitats for local critters.
Here are some tips:
-
Choose plants that can grow to their native size in the space allotted
-
Avoid shearing brushes - use native shrubs that will grow to the desired size
-
Do not plant non-native and/or invasive species
-
Plant a wide variety of native species
-
Choose plants that attract beneficial bugs
There are various sources of native plant lists that can used to find the right species such as:
-
Calscape.org - Native Plant List
-
California Invasive Plant Council - for species NOT to plant
Stormwater Best Practices
As a professional landscaper there is a lot you can do to help keep the Delta and our community's creeks clean and healthy. Everything that enters our storm drain goes directly to the Delta; this includes leaves, trash, and pesticides found in lawns and gardens. Following these tips can make a huge difference in the health and safety of our water:
-
Do not blow leaves and grass into the gutters on the street
-
Create landscapes that will not require pesticides as part of its maintenance
-
If pesticides are required, use only approved, low/non-toxic products and apply only as directed
For more information on what you can do to help keep our water and wildlife safe visit www.cccleanwater.org and check out the City's Clean Water Policy page.
Bay Area Friendly Landscaping Qualification
StopWaste.org has two Bay-Friendly Landscape Training and Qualification Programs for designing new landscapes and maintain existing ones. Participants will have the opportunity to become an expert in Bay-Friendly Landscaping as an ecologically based approach to the management of urban landscapes. Also, completion of the training program will gain you the certification of a Bay-Friendly Qualified Landscape Professional. To learn more about the certification program, training courses, or to sign up visit: Upcoming ReScape Training Events
CA Department of Pesticide Regulation (CDPR) Updates
There are regulations for the way that professional applicators apply pyrethroid insecticides. In parallel, new pyrethroid product labeling being implemented voluntarily by manufacturers at DPR's request--including special labels for the most persistent pyrethroid, bifenthrin--will provide further water quality protection. Both the regulations and the labeling will reduce treatments of outdoor impervious surfaces, thus reducing the quantity of pyrethroids that can be washed directly into gutters and storm drains when it rains or when water like irrigation overflow runs across treated surfaces. Together, the regulations and the new labeling will reduce the amount of pyrethroid insecticides in urban stormwater runoff by 80-90%. For more information visit the CA DPR website at www.cdpr.ca.gov or read this copy of the regulation changes [PDF]
Additional Information/Resources
-
The California Garden Web (from UC Davis)