Northwest YMCA Community Garden - An Amazing Transformation From a Lawn to a Native Garden

Located in Cupertino, the Northwest YMCA (the Y) is a major community hub in the heart of Silicon Valley. Every year, tens of thousands of people, many of them families, come here to attend classes and join activities offered year-round, such as swimming, yoga, and more.

The Y had a lawn at the back of the main building that was barely used. In 2022, they decided to transform it into a community garden to teach children the importance of the environment, how to take care of plants, and pair seniors with children. The local Rotary Club decided to award the year's funding to such projects to the Y project.

In addition to the Rotary funding, the project team also applied for Cal Water's Lawn-to-Garden rebate. At $3 per square foot, this rebate provided another critical source of funding.

Design of the Garden

We were honored to be tasked with designing the garden. We took this on as a charity project, organized weekly meetings, collected input from all the stakeholders, worked tirelessly on a design for several months, and finally completed a design that everyone was very happy with.

The garden was designed to be a native garden, with over 95% of the plants being native. As trees are tremendously important for our environment, we also chose a local tree, a Valley Oak, to be in the garden.

Volunteers Built the Garden

After the design was finished, we started to work with the project manager, George from the Cupertino Rotary Club, and led a team of about 140 volunteers, to put in the work every Saturday for about 6-7 months. The end result was a stunning community garden that everyone enjoys.

Here it shows in September 2022, the site was cleaned, and we placed the plants before the planting day the next day:

On planting day, around 60-70 volunteers from the local Rotary Club, high school, and Y member families joined in the planting.

The high school students planted the Valley Oak, and everyone helped.

Over the next 6-7 months, the volunteers came almost every Saturday morning to work on the garden.

A scout troop took on the building of the four raised vegetable beds. 

Plants Thrived With Only Rain Water

Drip irrigation was installed after planting. We watered the plants for two months after they were planted. When the winter rainy season started in early November, we shut off the water, which remained off until the following May. Without any irrigation, most plants did extremely well. They settled and thrived in their new home in the garden.

Grand Opening of the Garden

On June 24th, 2023, the garden had its grand opening. It started with a yoga session led by the Y's instructor. A ceremony followed where the mayor of Cupertino and the district manager of Cal Water delivered speeches.

After the speeches, the mayor presented an award to Matt, the executive director of the Y.

In her speech, the district manager of Cal Water, Dawn Smithson, praised the garden's water-saving efforts:

"They took 3,560 square feet of greenery and turned it into this awe-inspiring garden. This was done specifically through Cal Water's $3-per-square-foot Lawn-to-Garden rebate program. We estimate that this project is going to save about 64,000 gallons of water per year."

Great Biodiversity Benefits

On planting day, right after we put in the plants, a hummingbird already came to visit a native fuchsia we had just planted. It was the inspiration for the beautiful garden gate we eventually got.

We specifically designed a pollinator garden and planted dozens of native milkweeds for monarch butterflies. We saw them in the garden!

The garden has been full of bees, birds, and butterflies. Whenever you visit, you will hear the chirping of the birds and see the bees and butterflies flying around.

Great Harvest

Lots of super big zucchinis, non-stop tomatoes, huge pumpkins... the veggie garden just keeps turning out mini miracles.

Education & Fun In One Place

Since the garden opened its doors, small kids love to come here to play and explore. They learn about pollinators and butterflies and ask all kinds of questions. Here this little girl was showing her mom the monarch butterfly eggs she just learned. A community garden has something for everyone!

A Wonderful Transformation

After just one and a half years, we are so happy to see that a once rarely used lawn has become this beautiful garden. It has a native oak and many native plants; it feeds a wide variety of wildlife; it grows lots of produce; it gives everyone who visits so much joy; and it uses 64,000 gallons less water than before!

How wonderful is that!