With spring here, you may be looking outside your home to areas in your yard that need cleaning and organizing. Or perhaps you’re planning some spring planting, either in the way of flowers to add some color or a garden to add some healthy veggies to your family’s dinner table. As you plan your spring gardening tasks, LA Sanitation can help you with your spring to-do list. 

Got Mulch? – If planting a garden or flowers is in your spring plans, LA Sanitation can provide you with free mulch. Mulch is a gardener’s friend and is often used to retain moisture, suppress weeds, keep soil cool and make a garden’s beds more attractive. LA Sanitation creates high-quality mulch from the green waste collected from homes across our city. This mulch is available free to residents and can be picked up at self-serve locations around Los Angeles.

Too Big For The Bin – If you have yard debris that won’t fit in your city-issued green bin, LA Sanitation offers a once-a-year collection for excess yard trimmings to all the households we service, free of charge. Additionally, you may also purchase special extra capacity tags and attach them to your bundled yard debris. 

Too Toxic To Trash – Items like unwanted pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers are considered toxic household hazardous waste (or HHW) and need to be disposed of safely. Never place these products in your city-issued black, blue or green bins. When these products end up in landfills, they have the potential to leach toxins into our soil and groundwater. LA Sanitation operates seven permanent SAFE Centers throughout Los Angeles that are open every weekend for residents to safely dispose of unwanted HHW.

V Is For Victory Gardens – During the first and second world wars, Americans planted Victory Gardens to provide fresh fruits and vegetables for their families. LA Sanitation has produced a series of three informational videos that show you how to plant your own garden and produce your own mini farm-to-fork experience for your family.

Make The Most Of Compost – Nicknamed “black gold” by master gardeners, compost is a nutrient-rich, vibrant material that enriches the soil, holds on to more water and encourages your plants to thrive—a gardener’s dream. To learn more about how to create compost in your own backyard, LA Sanitation has a series of four informational videos on backyard composting.

Do you have any urban gardening tips that you’d like to share? E-mail us at lastormwater@lacity.org.