Friends of Noe Valley Garden Tour Fundraiser for Jungle Stairs

Every year Friends of Noe Valley hosts a garden tour throughout Noe that let’s you visit your local neighbors beautifully crafted gardens. This year the theme is secret gardens and you’ll get to see how ten of your neighbors have expertly crafted  a Zen garden, a palm garden, a drought tolerant garden, an outdoor room, an artist’s garden, a garden for entertaining, a vegetable and chicken garden, and a garden enhanced with found objects.

The garden tour is Saturday, June 7th from 10am to 4pm. Definitely a cool behind the scenes look at some of the amazing gardening going on right here in your hood.

The best part is that this year Friends of Noe Valley has graciously offered to donate the proceeds from the garden tour to raise money that will support the 22nd Street Jungle Stairs. So buy a ticket, buy a few. 🙂

Jungle Stairs Awarded District 8 Greening Grant

Great news – yesterday we learned that we were awarded funds from the District 8 Greening Grant. We will be working with FUF and Supervisor Weiner’s office and hope to use the funds for trees and plants for our continued hillside landscaping and beautification.

Community Challenge Grant Approved

We’re excited to announce that we have been awarded the Community Challenge Grant in the amount of $30k! We have grand plans to renovate and re-landscape the hillsides – details to come soon.

Community Challenge Grant

The past few weeks have been crazy and exciting, but today we submitted our application for the Community Challenge Grant. I have to give a special thanks to Marc & Ben Synder for their diligence on the application and Brennan Cox (GroundWorks) for developing an extremely professional and beautifully crafted design presentation. I’m also really impressed with the neighbors who have signed up to volunteer. We have 19 participants willing to commit over 800 hours to get the project up and running!

We have the support of Scott Wiener and through our group on NextDoor we have  gotten interest from neighbors living in the surrounding community.

We’ll keep you posted as soon as we hear back regarding our submission. In the mean time you can view our CCG application

Irrigation Water Meter Grant

Great news – we’ve secured our first grant for $10k to begin installing an irrigation system for the JungleStairs landscaping. We have several items on the agenda for continuing our efforts. Below is a recap of our community meeting and the various avenues were pursuing to bring this project to fruition. If you’re interested in getting involved, whether you want to help landscape, garden, fundraise, write grants or just hang out with fellow 22nd Street neighbors fill out this form and we’ll add you our (private) group list.

Here are the main things we discussed during our meeting earlier this week:

– Community Challenge Grant application (due end of March): responsibility accepted by Ben

– Irrigation Meter (due in 50 days): Ken will complete this application with SF Water and secure a plumber to install the back flow device. More details to come as they are presented. We selected the west slope of 22nd Street for this irrigation meter.

– Fundraising: We will focus on securing the community challenge grant; the funds received by individuals will be matched by the grant.

– Phase 1 design (top portion of west slope): we decided on a minimalist design that does not include lots of wood but rather focuses on character boulders and large natural looking rocks to help provide terracing. We talked about drought tolerant plants and will reach out to Annie Shaw of Penn garden to provide a recommended list of local, native species to plant.

– Eastern slope community clean up day: Correct me if I’m wrong but I think we agreed on Sat. March 9 – DPW will provide tools, gloves and clean up supplies.

– Tree trimming: we are in a holding pattern waiting to hear the diagnosis from the department of forrestry. If they deem the trees as dead then we will proceed with obtaining a permit to have them removed and plan to remove them. More details tbd as this unfolds.

– Library Box: we agreed to install this near top of the west slope and use it as a resource to inform people in the community about our restoration project.

– Mural: Interest seemed high. Lets continue to discuss this as an option for eliminating the need for ongoing graffitti cleanup and for beautifying the retaining walls with colorful imagery.

Don’t forget to fill out the contact form to ensure we are have emails for everyone who wants to stay informed in the neighborhood.

SF Parks Alliance Workshop

Over the past two months we’ve made great progress getting established; adopting the junglestairs parcel, developing a site plan and officially partnering with SFParks Alliance to obtain fiscal sponsorship. Today we learned tips from several experts about how they successfully beautified public land in San Francisco. We learned everything from planting local, native species to tapping grants to get our project fundraised. Several locals shared their stories of success with turning public space into a jungle oasis: Annie @ Pennsylvania Garden, Blade @ Storrie Garden and Liz @ Hidden Garden Steps.

The event was an exciting moment for the futre of San Francisco because it feels like SF Parks Alliance is really trying to kick off an initiative that encourages and supports the greening of the city.  There were several speakers who provided valuable information and we’re particularly excited about the Community Challenge Grant and the $100k that district supervisors have available to contribute to improvement projects like Jungle Stairs. As we prepare to raise money for phase one of Jungle Stairs we intend to explore these options to fund our project.

We also learned of two grants to help fund the irrigation between castro and diamond. The first is the rainwater run-off grant that would help fund a more sustianable system for collecting and irrigating everything we plant at jungle stairs. DPW also has a grant to install a system that taps public water but we are particularly interested in exploring a collection system that provides a more progressive and sustainable approach to maintaining the garden.

We even visited Aileen Barr at her studio in the mission to learn how she’s created thousands of ceramic tiles to cover the 140 steps at Hidden Garden. The team at Hidden Garden Steps is putting the names of their donors into each tile as an incentive to raise money for the tiling of the staircase.

We were most excited to hear about how all three of these communities in Potrero, Castro and Excelsior developed a strong sense of community and how their projects got neighbors spending time together. Email us to find out how you can join the gang, do some gardening and take part in a journey that will surely connect you with your neighbors on 22nd st.

Fiscal Sponsorship with SF Parks Alliance Initiated

Great news! Today we met at The SF Parks Alliance at 451 Hayes St. to begin our application for fiscal sponsorship. There have limited spots and have been frozen for the past year so we are lucky to be on this short list.

During our kick-off meeting we discussed the project and received all the necessary paperwork to complete our applicaiton. Once our group is officially sponsored by the SF Parks Alliance we will have a non-profit status and can begin fundraising for our project.

Next steps will be to complete the application that outlines our vision for the space, our mission to accomplish it, our site plan and budgetary expectations. 

We are excited to take this big step forward and hope to have something solidified within the next few weeks.

Application for Street Parks Program

Today we had an informative conversation with Julia Brasheers at SF Parks Alliance. We learned a lot about moving our project forward and next steps; which will be for us to hold a group meeting to commence planning. Julia would like to meet our group and brief us about tools, resources, expectations and advice for proceeding. She provided several resources and indicated that after DPW approves our application we can begin the process of planning our attack.

Now that we have submitted our Street Parks application to the DPW we have begun the process of officially forming a community group that will be dedicated to this initiative. She shared information about similar groups like the Pennsylvania Street Garden and the Hidden Garden Steps Project, their Kickstarter initiative and artist Collette Crusher who is helping to tile their steps. Learned about the Graffiti Watch program that provides resources to help us reduce graffiti on our steps.

Next steps will be to refine our vision, develop a site plan and hold a group meeting to get briefed by Julia at SF Parks Alliance. I will be in touch to schedule something that we can all attend shortly. I will create a calendar so we can see our upcoming events. I also created a “PROGRESS” page so we can keep track of what we’ve accomplished and what is up next.

Adopting the Parcel & securing a fiscal sponsorship

We spoke with the SF Parks Alliance and made an inquiry with DPW today. Our next course of action is to adopt the parcel of land that we want to care for. This is important because it shows we are committed to not only rehabbing, but also maintaining the area.

Once we have adopted the land we will proceed by securing a fiscal sponsorship. There are three main requirements we need for fiscal sponsorship:

1. We must ascertain three letters of support from local organizations who support our project. We plan to reach out to friends of Noe Valley as well as Friends of the Urban Forrest. We may also solicit the support of another local business who we have yet to determine.

2. Reach out to local property owners who will benefit from this project. I believe Rube Warren, Jo and myself are the main property owners on the Diamond side. We also need to determine who owns the apartment on the corner of Diamond & 22nd and send them a letter. We will also need to send letters to residents on the Collingwood to Castro side. We can most likely send out an email to Markus’ google group.

3. Create a proposal that includes our intended agenda with accompanying budget.

We can request fiscal sponsorship through the SF Parks Alliance, however, Maria indicated that they most likely won’t be accepting new sponsors until July or August. We can apply elsewhere but need to do some more research to find others who would be willing to sponsor our project. A fiscal sponsor is essentially an entity who handles the money we receive for the project in leu of us forming a 501 (c) 3

After we have secured fiscal sponsorship we’ll need to apply for a grant to fund the project. Here are a few potential grants that we can apply for:

1. SF Beautiful Grant

2. Community Challenge Grant (recently selected, so we’d have to wait another year to get this one)

3. We can do some research at the foundation center to find other grants that we can apply for.

4. It was also suggested that we send a letter to local residents to solicit funding for the project.

In the mean time I am waiting to hear back from DPW regarding the process for officially adopting this space.

A Community Led Urban Improvement Landscaping Initiative

Our Mission:

22nd street Jungle Stairs is on a mission to rehab and beautify the steps on 22nd between Diamond & Castro. We are a community led urban improvement landscaping initiative. We see the potential to transform the land around Noe Valley’s 22nd street stairs into an tropical urban oasis. We are a collective of neighbors who love landscape design and gardening and have a vision to turn this neglected section of public land into a beautiful local san francisco destination. Most importantly we want to extend the “jungle aesthetic” and improve the safety of the stairs.

This neglected tract of land is a hidden micro climate that harbors a densely tropical oasis in the middle of the city. With a little love and care we can tame this overgrown beast into an amazing tropical conservatory.

Just to be clear, we have great respect for nature and our mission is striclty constructive. We will be planting, repairing and maintaining, not clear cutting or removing any live plants.

Our desired course of action is:

– Clear debris (garbage, dead foliage & overgrown plants)

– Prepare the land, till soil and design areas for growing

– Repair rusted and dilapidated hand rails

– Maintain and shape the public land surrounding the stairs

– Plant new trees, shrubs, plants, herbs and veggies

– Increase the lighting for improved night safety

We have assembled 3 teams and are currently seeking volunteers interested in 3 specific areas:

– Funding Procurement Manager: further our stalled progress of appling for a city grant to fund this initiative. Funding would be primarily allocated towards repairing the handrails, terracing the hillside and purchasing plants.

– Urban Gardeners: volunteers who can help clear, rake, carry, dump, till and cultivate this raw urban plot

– Landcape Designers: plan terracing, choose appropriate local plants and procure free, donated or cheap sources of tropical foliage

Most importantly we want to extend the aesthetic and improve the safety of the stairs.

The steps and surrounding land is a hidden micro climate that harbors a densely tropical oasis in the middle of the city. With a little love and care we tame this overgrown beast into an amazing tropical conservatory.