The Surfrider Foundation: Protecting Oceans, Waves and Beaches since 1984

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Franklin Elementary
 Franklin Elementary 
  
OFG Your Home Too
 OFG Your Home Too 
Volunteers needed: 50

Project: Clean Water

Franklin Elementary School

Make your campus ocean friendly!

Project Description

The workday happened on Saturday, February 26 as part of the annual Spirit Awards for independent films. The site is Franklin Elementary School at 2400 Montana Ave., Santa Monica, CA. We got the approval from the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District to remove the turf and plants from in front of the cafeteria.

Our program partners, G3, did the garden design and workday coordination. Tom Stout of Tom Stout Landscaping (and a G3 Certified Professional) was the landscape contractor on the project.G3 also asked landscape professionals (members of the the LA District of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers) to volunteer their time and lead teams of volunteers. Thanks to hard work, a good plan and professional assistance, we got the work done! Oh, and ELLE/Aveeno treated the volunteers to special after-party eats and spa treatment.

This has become a great opportunity to both create a demonstration OFG for the elementary school kids and their parents and to train the School District staff in how to maintain OFG landscaping - which is where landscaping is headed. Just a few weeks after the installation, Surfrider-West LA/Malibu Chapter OFG Chair, Rebecca Correa, came back to the school to lead mini-classes in the garden to eight classes.
 
This campus project was pretty high end, but typically you do small things on your campus to make it more water conversation friendly.  For a host of ideas check out the resouces section.
 

Concrete Goals

Specific Plan

If you're planning to do anything on campus you need to first check with the school adminstration.  The most challenging aspect with this specific project was getting approval from the school district, but that was related to the scale and higher profile partners.

Project Leaders

Paul Herzog is a Surfrider Foundation staff member who coordinates and assist our OFG programs. 

Tom Stout owns Tom Stout Landscaping

Promotion & Documentation

This specific event was unique because we teamed with ELLE Magazine and Aveeno so we got an extra bit of promotion through their resources. 

We documented the event on Surfrider Foundation's OFG Blog.  It can be accessed in the link under the Resources section.

The Santa Monica Patch also provied coverage http://santamonica.patch.com/articles/franklin-elementary-school-gets-beautified-see-pics#photo-5078618

Resources

Paul Herzog, Surfrider Foundation's Ocean Friendly Garden Coordinator

OFG website http://www.surfrider.org/programs/entry/ocean-friendly-gardens

The City of Santa Monica provided funding through their sustainabile landscape rebate program.

ChapterNET intranet Program section.  http://chapternet.surfrider.org/   The information can be found under the Program header section called QUAD.