Mulch Madness Program

The Department of Water Resources
and Conservation

The City of Petaluma is crazy about water conservation! Our Mulch Madness Program is proof of this. We are offering free mulch, compost, cardboard, an irrigation conversion kit (for single family residential accounts only) and a coupon for a local native plant nursery to those customers who wish to sheet mulch their existing lawn. That’s right – it’s FREE – including delivery of the mulch, compost and cardboard. It’s complete Madness!

If you regularly use your lawn for recreational purposes, that’s great; keep it healthy and happy. But, in many yards, the most action the lawn gets is when it is watered, mowed, edged and fertilized; thus, wasting water, using fossil fuels and polluting the environment. If this describes all or part of the lawn area in your yard, Mulch Madness is the program for you.

Turf is one of the biggest water users out there – it takes more than 25,000 gallons of water per year to irrigate a typical 1000 square foot area of lawn (or turf)..

Why not take advantage of the Mulch Madness program and convert your never-used water-guzzling lawn into something more aesthetically pleasing and/or useful, such as a low water-use garden, vegetable garden or food forest!

How to Qualify
To qualify, single family and multifamily residential customers must first sign up for a Water-Wise HouseCall, which is another great free program offered by the City of Petaluma. A trained water conservation professional will measure your turf/lawn area and determine the amount of supplies you will need. Commercial accounts must call first to make an appointment for a site evaluation to be conducted by a City representative. During your HouseCall or site evaluation, you will be given more information about the program as well as instructions on how to sheet mulch your turf and convert your irrigation system to a drip system. Call our Water Conservation Hotline at (707) 778-4507 at any time if you have any questions.

After your evaluation, the City’s suppliers will contact you to set up a delivery date. Once you receive your mulch, compost and cardboard, you can pick up your drip irrigation conversion kit (for single family residential accounts only) and nursery coupons.

Program Rules
Combined, your turf area(s) must be at least 500 square feet in order to qualify for the program. However, if the turf area is smaller than the 500 square feet, a customer can “piggyback” on to a neighboring (or nearby) site that qualifies for the program; “piggyback” customers will be placed on a waiting list until another property in close proximity qualifies. Customers with smaller than 500 square feet of turf are encouraged to talk to their neighbors to get as many people as possible in the neighborhood (or business park) to sign up. This will help expedite the “piggyback” process and create a neighborhood full of low water use gardens!

Another option for those with smaller sites is to pick up the FREE mulch and cardboard themselves (the City will not pay for delivery of small quantities). All customers will be required to pick up their own irrigation supplies (coupons available for single family residential accounts only) and nursery coupons after being pre-qualified.

After the customer has been prequalified, an agreement must be signed by the customer stating that the mulch and supplies will be installed within a reasonable timeframe (30 days after delivery) and that it will be installed on the turf area specified during the Water-Wise HouseCall or site evaluation. The agreement will also alert the participant that a post evaluation may occur. The City will issue the coupons for the drip kit (single family residential accounts only) and plants after the agreement has been signed. The City will notify the mulch and cardboard vendors that the address is prequalified for delivery of a specified amount of mulch, compost and cardboard. The vendor will call the customer to arrange for delivery. Once the supplies have been delivered, the vendors will notify the City.

Supplies are only available while funding lasts.

Supply Limits

A maximum of 15 yards of mulch, 5 yards of compost and 2000 square feet of cardboard will be delivered to single family residential customers. For multifamily and commercial customers, a maximum of 100 yards of mulch, 32 yards of compost and 11 rolls of cardboard will be delivered. Multifamily and commercial accounts will not be given irrigation conversion kits as this is cost prohibitive.

Contact info

Single family and multifamily customers can sign up online for a Water-Wise HouseCall or call (707) 778-4507. Customers who have recently had a Water-Wise HouseCall can call to sign up for the Mulch Madness Program.

Commercial customers must call (707) 778-4507 to schedule a representative to perform a site evaluation.

 

 
Administrative Offices

202 North McDowell Blvd.
Petaluma, CA 94954
phone: 707.778.4546
fax: 707.778.4508
email: water@ci.petaluma.ca.us

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