Rainwater Catchment & Rain Garden

In 2016, Sutro Stewards received a Community Challenge Grant from the City of San Francisco to install a rainwater catchment system and plant a rain garden at the Sutro Native Plant Nursery. The project offers several benefits: reducing and slowing stormwater runoff from Mount Sutro, reducing municipal water use by the nursery, and creating a rain garden that increases habitat and helps to stabilize a formally weedy slope.

The 530 gallon cistern is installed and the rain garden planted with over 300 California native plants! This would not have been possible without the help of our partner organizations - UCSF, San Francisco Parks Alliance, and The Urban Farmer Store. We also could not have completed the project without the help of over 140 volunteers, who contributed over 300 hours of service over the past year to complete this project! Thank you to all the individuals and groups that contributed!