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MWD
Landscaping Forum IV From Alison
Shilling RSB Conservation Chairperson MWD and its associates are continuing to provide grants and exposure to
promote ‘California-friendly’ landscaping. Attendees at the latest forum,
representatives of water agencies, cities and counties, landscaping
professionals, nurseries and other interested parties, heard how the grants
from last year were used. In one project, Rick Fisher (CNPS, San Gabriel Chapter and Toyon Design)
has been supervising the restoration of grounds of the historic Sam and
Alfreda Maloof residence in Rancho Cucamonga. In another, two houses in Santa
Monica have been provided with landscapes, one ‘traditional’ and one with
natives; the water use in the latter of 47 gallons per day contrasts with the
242 gallons used by the former! Although specialist nurseries still predominate in providing natives,
Monrovia is now growing far more, and some retail suppliers are jumping on
the water-conserving band-wagon – Armstrong is organizing some CA native
plant classes, and Home Depot is expressing interest. The list of suggested
plants composed by Bart O’Brien of Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Gardens is
divided into vegetation types – ‘Chaparral’, ‘Desert’ ‘Woodland’ etc.
Hopefully this may help the nurseries to provide their customers with some
sort of coherent ‘palette’ of plants suited for their particular area. Next year grants will once again be available in the MWD’s ‘City
Makeover’ program. (This title is a little misleading since most projects are
for single gardens or open space, but the idea is to foster highly visible
plantings which will encourage the public to follow the example.) If anyone
knows of a public-area project which could use partnership funds, the call
for entries will be in November, and grants from $20,000 to $100,000 will be
awarded in May 2005. A new initiative which I hope will attract developers’ attention is the
MWD ‘California Friendly Model Home Pilot Program’. MWD will be providing
financial incentives to developers to install water-efficient appliances and
landscapes in their model homes. I am hoping to go to the several
developments being planned in my area to see if they will apply for a grant. Unfortunately, there seem to be no attempt at the moment to reach out to
the school districts, to see if they will use CA natives in the landscaping
of the many schools that are being built. Some existing schools are replacing
traditional landscaping with natives, both to conserve water and as an
educational tool, but it seems a pity – and a waste of money – not to do it
straight away in new schools. |
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Prototype ArcIMS website: Access to Collections Data on the Historic Flora of the San
Jacinto Mts As a follow up to our April
workshop - "Accessing Historic Collections with GIS for Effective Land
Management and Stewardship" see (www.riversideca.gov/museum/GISworkshop.htm), the website developed by
graduate students from the MS in GIS program at the University of Redlands is
now available online. You can link to the site two ways: by clicking on "Related
Themes and Links" at the bottom of the workshop homepage, and then
clicking on the link to the University of Redlands project at the bottom of
that page; or by going directly to http://lucy.redlands.edu/clark/. Keep in mind that, as a
working prototype, all elements of this site are not as yet fully functional.
However, it does allow for searches of the localities on the map display by
scientific and common names, as well as by key words in locality names. The scroll-down
list of available map formats allows you to view the study area as a shaded
relief map, as a generalized plant community diagram, as a generalized
precipitation map and as a slightly smaller area of compiled aerial photos. The tool buttons along the
right side of the map are not working very smoothly at this time, but will
ultimately allow zooms in and out of the map area, and selections of areas or
specific points to acquire a list of specimens from those locations. Once a search generates a
list, you can click on individual records to view a report on that specimen
and any images (including specimen images) related to that specimen. Keep in
mind that specimens and their data are drawn from the work by Edmund Jaeger
housed at the Smithsonian's US National Herbarium, as well as the Clark
Herbarium. We would greatly appreciate
your comments on this site. We feel it is an important start to our joint
effort, and it is likely University of Redlands students will continue to
develop this site in course work beginning this Fall. James M. Bryant Curator of Natural History Riverside Municipal Museum 3580 Mission Inn Avenue Riverside, CA 92501 jbryant@riversideca.gov (909) 826-5273 (909) 369-4970 FAX (as of 7/17/2004, all
area codes will be (951) |