Landscape Transformation Project

Summary

Through climate‐adaptive habitat creation and community building in Santa Barbara County, the Garden seeks to increase climate resiliency and biological diversity while improving human health and well‐being.
The proposed project will connect people to nature in familiar landscapes, then engage them in transforming those landscapes with native plants and studying the creatures that colonize those landscapes, while encouraging participants to use native plants in their home gardens. Over the course of four years (2023‐2026), the Garden plans to implement this project at eight sites distributed across Santa Barbara County, in each of its supervisory districts, allowing many people to help transform those landscapes to native plants and document the effects. The project includes training a cadre of ambassadors to educate others, providing tools for success, and spreading the word via video and social networks – to inspire native plant landscape transformations across Santa Barbara County and California. The creation of these demonstration gardens will expand the amount of acreage of native habitat cover while inspiring and informing future landscape transformations.

Learn more about the project here.