Expanding Our Capacity

The LA2050 Grants Challenge has supercharged our California Native Plant Landscaper Certification Program (CNPLC). CNPLC is a bilingual (English and Spanish) job-training program for landscape professionals developed and taught by experts in the field. By providing this training to landscapers, we help grow independent businesses while enabling residents of Los Angeles County to save water, restore habitats, and bring the unique beauty of the natural world into our towns, cities, and homes.

At the beginning of the grant cycle, one of our main challenges was staffing strain. Previously, the program was run by our existing staff members who already had a full slate of dult education, outreach, volunteer, and garden tour programs to administer. The LA2050 Grants Challenge funding allowed us to hire Paola Flores Núñez as our dedicated rofessional education coordinator. Paola has worked for highly regarded local organizations including Mujeres de la Tierra, Los Angeles Conservation Corps, Pacoima Beautiful, and the Angeles National Forest. In this new position, Paola is responsible for managing delivery of the CNPLC, processing student applications, working with our tech and design team on our Professional Education Portal website, collaborating with creative and outreach staff on promotional efforts, and engaging our community. 

Having a dedicated staff member to administer our CNPLC has made a world of difference. While our classes for English speakers filled up fast, we needed help getting the word out to Spanish speakers. Paola has implemented a strategy of increased on-the-ground flyering around the community, reaching out to local community resource centers, nature centers, and adult schools. Further outreach is planned with flyering at nurseries and irrigation supply stores. Digital outreach will expand with Google ads, Facebook ads, and posting on online forums like Nextdoor.

In addition to expanded staffing, we have been able to fully fund ten more cohorts of the CNPLC. In the LA2050-funded sessions, we have trained 49 professionals so far. That brings the total number of landscape professionals served by this program up to 521. We anticipate having 200 more students complete the program in this grant cycle.

A Greener Workforce

This grant period has seen the implementation of our Native Plant Landscaper Job Board, which connects ecologically-minded landscapers with companies and clients committed to the same goals. Jobs can be posted by anyone with an opportunity in Southern California focused on California native plants, including residential gardens. Listings on the job board are restricted to landscape professionals working in Southern California, and these professionals must be registered and logged in through our Professional Education Portal to access job postings.

This is the first job board in the region dedicated to environmentally friendly landscape and gardening jobs that we know of. It addresses a major bottleneck in the industry of connecting environmentally conscious homeowners, land/property managers, and landscape industry professional to skilled workers. To date, there have been 220 listings on the job board.

What’s Next

As we continue to deliver our training to more students in the coming months, we also look towards new horizons for the program. A major component of this is an assessment of progress and opportunity for ecological landscaping in Los Angeles. We plan to administer follow up surveys for all alumni of the program, to measure how many continue to work with native plants months or years after completing the certification.

We are also exploring avenues for research in the landscape industry and green jobs. We have had several conversations with academic researchers who are interested in partnering with us to conduct in-person surveys with people in the field, to learn the overall knowledge of landscapers about native plants, how they decide their planting choices, and what would incentivize them to add natives into their business.

Other upcoming activities include an in-person community event taking place in the summer, featuring speakers from the industry and educational resources. This event will connect landscape professionals to the native plant supply chain, and help further develop the sustainable landscaping industry. We have also begun forming a steering committee consisting of a wide range of experts from the fields of landscaping, horticulture, public education, and water management.

We're excited and hopeful to be sharing our progress in growing our Professional Education Programming. Thanks to the support of the LA2050 Grants Challenge, we are thrilled to watch the landscapes of Los Angeles become more biodiverse and climate resilient, while also increasing professional development opportunities for members of this industry.