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Thank you to all of you for sharing our blog and our Facebook page to friends and family!  We were able to gain 6 additional “likes” on Facebook (www.facebook.com/firmadesigngroup) and several comments on our blog page (www.firmadesigngroup.com/blog).  When we posted, we were at 95 likes and got to 101 likes thanks to all of you!

We will be making a $51 donation to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Sonoma County, thanks to all of you!

We hope you have a great weekend, it’s going to beautiful!  Plan your backyard renovation and then call us to help you head in the right direction!

I just noticed a weird, or maybe not so weird coincidence!  I began to write my blog post for the week and I noticed that last week was our 100th posting on our blog.  Wow, have I really wrote that many blogs?  I couldn’t believe it!

100 LIKES!

Then, over the weekend, I noticed we were at 95 likes on our Facebook fan page (https://www.facebook.com/firmadesigngroup) and I posted a brief request for additional likes – up to 100 – and we would donate $50 to the Boys and Girls Club of Central Sonoma County (http://www.bgccsc.org/).  So, to get from 95 to 100 likes, was pretty easy…after offering the donation.

Something everyone forgot though, is that if we go over 100 likes (we’ve been at 100 since Sunday), we’ll donate $1 for every like to the Boys and Girls Club of Central Sonoma County!

So, while we’re reaching milestones on our social media, let’s try to reach a milestone with our donation to the Boys and Girls Club of Central Sonoma County!  It doesn’t cost anything for you to like our page, we only post pictures of our projects, and do a weekly blog…so why don’t you like our page?

https://www.facebook.com/firmadesigngroup

Our beautiful Facebook Page

And lastly, check out our LinkedIn page at http://www.linkedin.com/company/firma-design-group?trk=hb_tab_compy_id_2024675

I was trying to catch up on reading some magazines last night and two totally different magazines that I read had articles about doing good things with your expertise and business.  We have always felt that giving back to the community is a very important aspect of our professional lives and at Firma Design Group, we continue to do that.  In this article in the Landscape Management magazine, http://landscapemanagement.net/2013/02/22/a-good-habit/, the company assisted their local Habitat for Humanity affiliate with lansdcaping and she says:  “our intent is never to perform stewardship to receive recognition, but rather for the personal satisfaction of knowing it gave to others who are less fortunate.” 

Firma Design Group is involved with the Habitat for Humanity of Sonoma County (www.habitatsoco.org) in many ways.  We have been involved with that organization for about 8 years in many different forms.  At this moment, we are working with them to develop a 5 home subdivision in Cotati, California.

It truly is a blessing to be able to help less fortunate individuals and families realize their dream, but that isn’t all that Firma Design Group does.  We donate money to different organizations, we have helped California Parenting Institute and United Way with a street frontage landscape installation (we did design and installation with National Instruments of Santa Rosa) at CPI’s headquarters during United Way’s Day of Caring, we have assisted Bernard Elementary School with a deck design and installation, we have worked with the Santa Rosa Community Health Centers to help them design a garden in front of their Roseland facility and much more.

It is our pleasure to work with individuals and non-profits to help them with their dreams and projects.  It gives us great pleasure to do do so – and at the same time – it makes our community BETTER!

Over the past year and a half, our Vice President of Planning and Landscape Architecture Michael Cook, has been involved with two different committees of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers for nationwide standards in water and irrigation.  The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers is an international scientific and educational organization dedicated to the advancement of engineering applicable to agricultural, food, and biological systems. Its 9,000 members, from more than 100 countries, are consultants, managers, researchers, and others who have the training and experience to understand the interrelationships between technology and living systems.

Michael Cook

Michael has been involved with standard X623, Standardized Procedure for Determining Landscape Plant Water Requirements, and standard X627, Standardized Testing Protocol for Weather-based or Soil Moisture-based Landscape Irrigation Control Devices.  These standards will potentially provide nationwide standards (where currently there are either regionally or state based standards).  By standardizing nationally, landscape architects, designers and contractors will more easily be able to work in multiple states or regions.

Standard X623 has an objective to “…describe a methodology to estimate net landscape plant water requirements of permanently installed, non-production based, established landscape materials.  The standard will provide minimum water requirements for acceptable plant appearance and function.

The procedure may include information and techniques to aid decisions for potential deficit watering to maintain plants under minimum survival requirements (drought conditions). ”  Michael’s experience with irrigation standards, knowledge of plant-based needs and internal knowledge of what California, as well as other states, have accomlished has proven to be irreplaceable.

“As the demand on water resources and the importance of water use efficiency grow, water agencies, regulators, land owners, landscape managers, and others are relying more heavily on irrigation controllers that use real-time weather or soil-moisture data to determine irrigation needs and scheduling.  The new document will standardize the methods for testing such controllers.”  Standard X627 will have extreme importance as these controllers become standard nationwide.

Michael has been involved significantly as Chair of subcommittees and the knowledge source for multiple different subcommittees.  It has been his pleasure to assist ASABE in their efforts.