Arlington Beats the Heat!

Arlington Beats the Heat!

GARDENING FOR HEALTHY CITIES

Urgent action is needed to protect our cities and native ecosystems from a rapidly warming climate. We can do this by celebrating healthy gardens and learning climate resilient gardening! In order to support healthy gardens and future gardeners, Arlington Garden is launching a $25,000 campaign to strengthen our educational mission.

It is not often that any threat can be countered by gardening and celebrating beauty. But many negative effects of climate change – the urban heat island effect, increased air pollution, decreased rainfall, and damage to our natural ecosystems – can be alleviated by creating healthy green spaces across our cities. Since our founding, we have served as a model for addressing climate change through gardening. In 2022, we are expanding our impact through education.

Please help us by donating to our “Arlington Beats the Heat” campaign!

WITH HEALTHY GARDENS

Urgent action is needed to protect our cities and native ecosystems from a quickly warming climate. We can do this by celebrating healthy gardens and educating the next generation of climate resilient gardeners. Arlington Garden is launching a $25,000 campaign to strengthen our educational mission.

Please help us by donating to our “Arlington Beats the Heat” campaign!

A KNOWLEDGE GAP

Signs along the freeway now flash water restrictions instead of road closures. Local newspapers supply a steady drip-drip of unwelcome new records: new record-low precipitation, new record-low levels in reservoirs. It is widely acknowledged that lawns need to be reduced or replaced, but there is a gap between acknowledgement and action. How do we replace lawns? What do we replace them with? How can we garden to fight climate change rather than just respond to it?

Los Angeles County needs more accessible and effective education to fill this knowledge gap. We must also cultivate major changes in our regional culture: the next generation of Southern Californians need to be joyous stewards of our environment and inspirational allies protecting our cities.

Due to generous financial support from the Arlington Garden community, this past year we began to fill the knowledge gap with new programs and public education:

• We launched a new series of low-cost and free workshops (“Roots and Regeneration”) connecting the public to our urban ecosystems.
• We hosted field trips to the garden for college and primary school students.
• We created an educational field guide for Arlington Garden distributed for free to all Pasadena Unified School District 5th graders.

Most dramatically, we greatly expanded our educational volunteer workshops: every other weekend for the past year, volunteers have learned hands-on climate resilient gardening from our team of expert horticulturists. The response to this innovative programming has been incredible: we achieved a 500% increase in volunteers!

A KNOWLEDGE GAP

Signs along the freeway flash water restrictions instead of road closures. Local newspapers supply a steady drip-drip of unwelcome new records: new low precipitation, new highest temperature. It is widely acknowledged that lawns need to be reduced and replaced, but there is a gap between acknowledgement and action. What do we replace lawns with? How do we garden to fight climate change?

Due to generous financial support from the Arlington Garden community, this past year we launched new educational initiatives to fill this gap including a series of low-cost/free workshops and a free field guide. We also greatly expanded our educational volunteer workshops with innovative programming, achieving a 500% increase in volunteers over last year!

WE CANNOT EDUCATE WITHOUT YOUR HELP!

The need for education has never been more important as we face increasing heat and other challenges, but we cannot continue our vital work without you! Arlington Garden is not a municipal park. Our single largest source of revenue is donations from individuals like you. Among other things, reaching our campaign goal gives us the capacity to:

• Double the number of weekend hands-on education workshops.
• Increase the number of Roots and Regeneration events to 12 per year and fairly compensate our expert educators.
• Pay for buses to take the next generation of gardeners on field trips to Arlington Garden.

Please help us to educate future gardeners and beat the heat by giving to our Campaign.

Arlington Garden is unique. 

We are a free, community-built space that uses— not just teaches — climate resilient gardening. And because we practice what we teach, we are able to provide local residents with hands-on education!

WE CANNOT EDUCATE WITHOUT YOUR HELP!

The need for education has never been more important as we face increasing heat and other challenges, but we cannot continue to expand our vital educational work without you! Our single largest source of revenue is donations from individuals like you. Among other things, reaching our campaign goal gives us the capacity to:

• Double the number of weekend hands-on education workshops.
• Increase the number of Roots and Regeneration events to 12 per year and fairly compensate our expert educators.
• Pay for buses to take the next generation of gardeners on field trips.

Arlington Garden is not a municipal park. We are a free, non-profit garden built by volunteers who wanted to share their love and knowledge of the natural world. This love and knowledge is our special responsibility to pass on. Please help us to educate future gardeners and beat the heat by giving to our Campaign.