Surfrider Foundation gardens work to keep the ocean clean

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Stephanie Pacheco tends to her matilija poppies, commonly referred to as “Fried Egg Flowers.” The plants are drought resistant and are a focal point of her Fountain Valley backyard. The Surfrider Foundation is pushing homeowners and businesses to alter their landscaping to reduce runoff, and thus reduce pollution into the ocean. The program, called Ocean Friendly Gardens, advocates for native plants and permeable landscaping surfaces that absorb water rather than push it off the property.JOSHUA SUDOCK, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER










"Can I have a vegetable garden?"

"Oh, I don't know."


"Oh, OK."

Stephanie laughed.



Ed said the Ocean Friendly Garden is a "tremendous savings in cost and a tremendous savings in water." Businesses, too, can get the Ocean Friendly certification.

Rainbow Environmental Services in Huntington Beach had a different reason for installing an Ocean Friendly Garden at one of the entrances to their waste disposal and processing facility.

Legally, water must be filtered before leaving the 18-acre property. Runoff from the largely asphalt and concrete property is funneled into grates that lead to 91 underground filters that can process 1,350 gallons per minute.

But during rainstorms, water would rush past the grate at Gate 6, escaping the property unfiltered. So Rainbow installed a small Ocean Friendly Garden at that gate – one of seven – that would slow the water and allow it to sink into the ground before being funneled to the filters.

"Nature has a great way of dealing with issues," said Sue Gordon, Rainbow's vice president of environmental and public affairs. "If you employ that, it's really effective."


1. Tear out turf grass: That green medley of French-style grasses is consuming gallons upon gallons of your water – and money. Replace it with a garden that has more color, requires less maintenance, lessens carbon emissions from mowing and doesn't take nearly as much water.

2. Direct downspouts off the driveway: Water that flows from the roof of your house down the downspout and to the storm drain is a waste, and it has all the pollutants that have settled on your roof. Instead, shunt water into rain barrels, or bioswales, where the water can soak into the earth.

3. Grow your own fruits and vegetables: Sure, watering fruit trees and vegetable gardens takes more than zero water. But the savings in your wallet from buying less food, the ecological savings of transporting less food and the pleasure of eating homegrown avocados make up for it.

4. Break up hard surfaces: Water normally sheets straight down your driveway to the storm drain. Break up that concrete slab with a gravel stripe down the middle. For walkways around the sides of the house, use paving stones with gravel in the gaps rather than solid concrete.

5. Mix and match native plants: Not all the plants in your garden have to be from here – some species from regions with similar climates will also fare well. And there are many more options than cacti and stumpy shrubs. Seasonal flowering grasses and certain kinds of trees do well here.


Surfrider Foundation certification: You get a sign to place in your garden marking it as officially Ocean Friendly. The sign costs $18, and you have to order it after filling out a checklist of prerequisites and submitting a report. The requirements are extensive and range from having less than 20 percent of the lawn be turf grass to limiting spray irrigation to 100 square feet, having no chemical additives to installing permeable walkways. A Surfrider-affiliated person will verify the garden is ocean friendly. Contact your local Surfrider chapter for details, or go to

That green lawn is contributing to a natural resource crises in the western United States: water. According to Greg Goran, chairman of the Surfrider Foundation's Ocean Friendly Gardens program for Huntington Beach and Seal Beach, "Lawns are not friendly to wildlife and not friendly to the ocean.

"About 75 percent of the water we consume as Americans goes on the landscape, and most of that goes to watering turf grass.

"(Herbicides and pesticides) don't stay there, but during the next watering, they're going to wash off into the storm drains.

"When we have a significant rain event, it usually absorbs pretty quickly and becomes saturated, and then it sheets off.

"We're the only country in the world that embraces turf grass as the norm. Everybody else embraces their native flora.

"It's the number one irrigated crop in the country, more than food. Three of five major rivers in the state are drained exclusively for watering turf.

"We are literally transporting a precious resource hundreds of miles and then dumping it down the drain."

Water district offers removal incentives

For those who want to tear out turf grass on their properties, the Municipal Water District of Orange County is offering an incentive of $1 per square foot of turf removed. The district has seen more than 1 million square feet torn out already. Funding for the period from July 1, 2012 to June 30 has expired; the district is not taking applications at the moment. However, new funding may be available at the end of the month.

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