What a year! For Sausalito Beautiful, 2020 has been a year of ups, downs, and rebuilding. Unfortunately, coronavirus hampered many of our planned activities including a large community planting at Dunphy Park, Green Thumbs Saturdays, and several other projects in partnership with the City of Sausalito. On the other hand, we implemented two rewarding projects, we protected our recent investments in trees, and we grew our capacity as an organization. As with many of you, we are looking forward to significantly improved 2021.

Despite the year’s challenges, we have been delighted to play a part in the Southview Park renovation. The City has $2M in funds from Measures F and O for infrastructure, but had no money for landscaping. Thus Sausalito Beautiful commissioned a landscape plan from SWA, which will focus on native and drought tolerant plants. We provided a $10K challenge grant, helping to raise funds for the park. If all goes well, the infrastructure and landscaping should be completed in Spring 2021, resulting in a gorgeous park to be enjoyed for generations.

Another rewarding project was conceived in the depths of the coronavirus doldrums: planting daffodils to brighten our parks and cheer up the community. In the last few weeks, Sausalito Beautiful led two teams of 53 volunteers in planting over 1,000 daffodil bulbs in Dunphy and MLK Parks. These cheery yellow and white flowers will lift our spirits in the next few months as the winter turns to spring—and they will return year after year, only needing the winter rains and California sunshine to thrive.

On another front, you may recall that last year Sausalito Beautiful led the planting of over 75 trees at MLK Park, Caledonia Street, and downtown Bridgeway. Over the past year we have been tracking the health of those trees, in some cases paying a contractor to water them and arranging for an arborist to fertilize them. Trees do not take a lot of care, but the first few years are very important to shape their health and structure for decades.

In the advocacy arena:

• Sausalito Beautiful founder Shelby Van Meter continued to monitor the General Plan process, ensuring that public landscapes are included as part of public infrastructure;
• Our President, Bill Hynes, has been working with other local design professionals advising the design for the Ferry Landing;
• Various board members have made several presentations to the City Council and Planning Commission ensuring that our city’s green spaces are well designed and maintained.

Given that our hands have been tied regarding many other projects, we have spent the year building our organization’s capacity. We added three new members to our Board of Directors: Nathan Scripps, Marsha Armitage-Bristow, and Yasmine McGrane. These new members bring formidable community development skills and will help us reach out to young families. We’ve also forged strong partnerships with county-wide volunteer clearinghouses, who have connected us with skilled volunteers for short and long-term projects. Lastly, we’ve consolidated our technology platform, standardizing on Google and Slack, which helps ensure that the organization is built to last.

Lastly we’d like to congratulate one of our own, Carolyn Revelle, who was recently awarded Sausalito Beautiful’s Little Willow award for demonstrating an extraordinary commitment to beautification of Sausalito’s landscapes. Carolyn, an urban planner and landscape designer, was a Founding Board member of Sausalito Beautiful starting in January 2015, and served as Vice President for 2 years. She was responsible for formulating our first strategic plan. More recently, she has served as head of Projects and Programs while vigorously participating in multiple ways: lobbying the City for budget line items, advocating to City Council, participating in Green Thumbs, and recruiting Board members. We are so thankful for her wisdom, steadfastness, and leadership.
All of us at Sausalito Beautiful wish you a safe, healthy, and happy holiday season!
Thank you for all your support over the years and all the best to you in 2021,

– The Sausalito Beautiful Team

Bill Hynes, President
Carolyn Revelle
Lise Ciolino
Ken Schwarz
Adele Nieto
Joan McRobbie
Nathan Scripps
Marsha Armitage-Bristow
Yasmine McGrane

P.S. As you know, we are a 100% volunteer organization: we have no staff, office, or even phone number.  We spend your donation as if it were our own money, and we are very grateful for your support whether that be financial, moral, or your volunteer time. If you are in the mode of yearly giving, we humbly ask for your donation to continue supporting our work in keeping Sausalito Beautiful.

Click here to change this text