Welcome to Sweetwater Collaborative

Sweetwater Collaborative was founded January 2013 and worked in the Santa Barbara area through mid-2023, demonstrating how to live in balance with our local watershed using regenerative, waterwise landscape practices. We provided education, hands-on workshops, and trainings for sustainable water management. Our biggest programs were our hands-on workshops installing water wise systems and landscapes, using innovative water sources whenever possible, as well as our 101 classes, tours, and site consultations.

We emphasized keeping or putting carbon in the soil by increasing soil biology and permeability through the combination of mulch, rainwater, compost tea and appropriate plants. From time to time, we offered Sweet Water Wise Tours of properties that we have helped to transform with beautiful, water saving landscapes. We aimed to give the support and guidance that each community member needed to be able to make the water wise changes that are right for their context. Sweetwater used Sociocracy as our governance model, which honors every member’s opinion and voice.

Sweetwater hosted monthly Technical Round Tables for Landscape Professionals in 2015-2016, and had been working on developing hands-on vocational training for maintenance gardeners and other landscapers to teach best practices in making our landscapes more water wise. Those programs never came to fruition.

Sweetwater Collaborative was awarded the 2018 Water Hero Award for their commitment to educating the community on water resource efficiency through classes, presentations, and hands-on workshops throughout Santa Barbara County.

In 2023, it has become clear that we could not continue as currently structured. We never really recovered from the Pandemic, and we set in place steps to dissolve. We hope that our legacy has mattered.

We are leaving this static website up for the next five years, to share our resouces with the community.

Thanks to all of our supporters, volunteers, donors, partners, funders and interested community members over the years!