On September 7, 2021, City Council gave staff direction to implement a number of water conservation efforts, including converting the lawn that surrounds City Hall to drought tolerant landscape. Motivating Council’s direction is the ongoing drought state of emergency, Governor Newsom’s call for voluntary reductions, Alameda’s Climate Action and Resiliency Plan’s objective to build resiliency in the face of climate change and EBMUD’s offering of a new landscape rebate program for lawn conversions to water-wise gardens that thrive in California’s summer-dry climate and during a drought. On December 2, 2021, the Historical Advisory Board granted a Certificate of Approval for the work to proceed.
Existing City Hall landscape is mostly water intensive lawn, hedged boxwood and overgrown species of rose foundation plants. The redesign will not change the shape of the planter beds, just the landscaping within them to feature a mixture of drought tolerant Mediterranean climate flowering plants and a minimum of 50% California native plants. See here(PDF, 40MB) for an initial concept design. We are considering a number of plants from this plant palette(PDF, 19MB). Many of these species attract pollinators, butterflies, humming birds etc. The plan is to have the new City Hall landscape educate residents of drought tolerant landscapes for their residential gardens.