27: Sheri Menelli on Being an Earth Friendly Homeowner

Today, we are meeting with Sheri Menelli, a fellow podcaster and an Earth Friendly Homeowner and member of the Secrets of Soil Society. Sheri has a green garden group and teaches people how to turn their lawns into a drought-tolerant landscapes. Sheri wanted to create a podcast because “I know if we just had a way to get out some of the information that we knew out to the public, we’d have less pollution in our water, healthier soil and less damage from droughts and floods.”
Quotable/Tweetable: “There are so many ways that nature heals itself.”

How did Sheri get started on this path?
She became frustrated with buying produce in the stores and not knowing its true origins or how many nutrients it had.
She asked herself: “Why am I not growing my own food?”
She read every book on organic gardening, only discover a repeated pattern: There are two options: Spray all the pests with organic or not. She thought, “Something is wrong.”
Then she read Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway and had big A-HA Moments.
How Sheri defines permaculture: Working with nature in such a way that it makes less work for you for the long-term.
Her other dilemma was more widespread in her state of California: Homeowner’s associations were fining homeowners up to $800 for brown lawns suffering from a drought. Sheri was not only instrumental in making it illegal for the HOA to impart such fines, she started teaching homeowners how to construct front yards suitable for the drought conditions.

Sheri’s Book Recommendations:

Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway

Producer’s note: Click here to listen to Toby’s Hemenway’s Podcast.

Teaming with Microbes by Jeff Lowenfels

Her other notables:

Brad Lancaster, Jeff Todd

Greening The Desert Geoff Lawton

Where can you reach Sheri?

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/earthfriendlyhomeowner

WEBSITE: http://www.earthfriendlyhomeowner.com/

PODCAST: http://www.earthfriendlyhomeowner.com/podcasts/ (on Sound Cloud)