Measuring Our Lives in Gallons, Pounds, Blooms and Tweets
December 14, 2018. By Cassy and Kirk Aoyagi: Last year, we celebrated 20 years in business. When we say celebrated, we mean it happened without us realizing it! It took one of our first clients congratulating us on our 21st year for us to realize we’d reached such a significant milestone. When we wondered where the time went, our chief data analyst Mark Britten provided us with the gift of understanding.
Apparently, in the past 20 years, we have removed about 200,000 square feet of thirsty lawn – the rough equivalent of 40 football fields or 750 tennis courts! As a result, each year, we now:
- Save well over 10 million gallons of water, increasing our drought resilience
- Reduce air pollution equivalent to a year of commutes for 59 car-driving Angelenos
- Save our clients’ approximately $700,000 a year in lawn care
- Keep 2400 lbs of toxic chemical fertilizers out of our watershed
In doing less harm, we’ve also done some good! We’ve added about 1.5 million square feet of authentic, native habitat to LA. These habitats range from northern Tujunga to mid-Playa Del Rey, western Malibu to the San Marino foothills. If we could, we’d measure that in native species planted, caterpillars cocooned, (bird!) tweets, and lizard encounters, but the value of this accomplishment is truly best marked with our hearts.
Speaking of our hearts. When we say “we” and “our” impact, please understand you are our we! None of this would have been possible without our first handful of clients trusting two recent grads with their gardens and the nearly 50 clients who have opened their gardens for tours. You taught us to believe in ourselves and drew others to the cause by sharing your garden’s beauty, your enthusiasm and your expertise.
As we end the year, know we are incredibly grateful for our ability to continue this work, for the chance to benefit LA with our full hearts, and to do it all side by side with you!