Gardening and landscaping allow us to beautify our properties and give us something fun to do on weekends, but it can also help improve the watershed ecosystem we live in. Russian River-Friendly Landscaping, a set of guidelines developed by the Russian River Watershed Association (RRWA), is a systematic approach to designing, constructing, and maintaining landscapes based on basic principles of natural systems. When we incorporate these guidelines into our landscaping, there are multiple benefits: we protect and conserve our local waterways by reducing plant debris and pesticide use, decreasing runoff by allowing more water to infiltrate into the soil, and more.