Last last summer my cohousing community applied for a grant with the State Forestry Department for the development and maintenance of our urban forest. I worked on the proposal and became the assistant coordinator of the grant when it was awarded. In October we did our first project under the grant, a partial inventory of the trees in our ravine. Here are some photos from that event.
Last weekend we did the second project, a workshop to built a rain water catchment cistern and planted a forest garden in front of our Common House. The workshop was open to the larger community as well as members of our Village. All in all we had about 40 folks working on the project including the workshop participants and the support folks who fed the workers, did meet and greet and all the other little things that make such a project a success.
Above is a photo of some folks planting the forest garden which include an Arizona Ash, a couple of apple trees, manzanita bushes (the namesake of the community) and other small bushes and plants. When it all grows up it will be a complete top to bottom little forest with some food plants for both people and animals.
The cistern is a 5' x 6' galvanized metal culvert upended and sunk into concrete. It is positioned under one of the gutters from the common house so it can collect rain water during our rainy seasons. Once the concrete sets up we can install the rest of the plumbing and connect it to the irrigation system. Then we'll be set when the monsoons arrive in July.
By this time next year we should have more water than we know what to do with. (The average home roof collects more than enough rain to water the average suburban landscape, even here in the high desert!) Although we get a lot less rain than our friends in Houston, our biggest problem here is that the rains don't come at the right time of year. Without help everything dies between the last winter rain/snow in March or April and the beginning of the monsoons in mid-July. We literally get no precipitation during this time! All but the hardiest plants can't survive the burning early summer sun without water.
We'll do another workshop in the fall to install a second cistern to collect from the other side of the roof and a second, smaller forest garden on the other side of our common house. In the meantime, we're enjoying the sense of accomplishment of taking a barren patch of ground and turning it into a forest oasis while preserving our most precious resource--water.
We'll be putting a whole series of photos from the workshop on the Village website soon.
Update: The Prescott Courier, our local newspaper, did a great story on this event. Check it out here.
