When Andrew Millison returned to Tucson this year to visit the teacher who first introduced him to permaculture, he found a neighborhood that looked fundamentally different from the one he remembered. The transformation was the work of Brad Lancaster, the permaculture instructor whose early experiments with simple curb cuts and street basins have reshaped how water moves through parts of the city. Millison, who attended his first permaculture class in 1996 and later became a teacher himself, posted a video on July 1, 2026 documenting the changes he saw in the community where his teacher has worked for decades.
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Then-and-now split photo of an Arizona street: a barren, dry front yard (left) and the same block transformed with a rainwater-fed curb channel and lush desert vegetation (right) after neighbors adopted Lancaster’s rainwater-collection method.
Three decades ago, the streets in the block Lancaster focused on were built to shed water quickly: asphalt curbs and gutters funneled rain off property and into storm drains, leaving little moisture to support plants. Lancaster and a small group of neighbors began taking a different approach. They cut openings into curbs and removed sections of asphalt to create shallow basins and channels that would slow, capture and retain rainwater. The changes were deliberate and low-tech: instead of letting water run off into drains, the altered curbs directed it into soil where it could sink in and nourish trees and understory plants.
At the time, those curb alterations were not permitted. Lancaster and his collaborators were effectively breaking local rules by modifying public street infrastructure. But their goal was straightforward: capture as much rain as possible in a desert environment that averages only about 11 inches of rainfall a year, and use that water to establish and irrigate native, edible trees and shrubs. Over years of work, the block moved from a sparse, sun-baked landscape toward a canopy of trees and an understory of food-bearing plants that people could harvest directly from the street.
The measurable results accumulated as the project scaled. In the neighborhood where Lancaster led the effort, residents reported collecting roughly 5,000 gallons of rainwater per year from the modified streetscape, despite the low annual rainfall. Over a longer timeframe, the community documented the capture of more than a million and a quarter gallons of stormwater. Those captured volumes have supported the planting of more than 1,800 native food-bearing trees and thousands of multi-use understory plants, according to the account of the project’s leaders.
The choice of vegetation emphasized species adapted to the local climate and capable of providing food. Residents planted native edibles such as velvet mesquite, condolia, wolfberry, goji berry and hackberry, among others. The shift in plant communities meant that neighborhood residents could often step outside and gather food within sight of their homes, reducing reliance on grocery trips for some items. The return of plant life also attracted wildlife: the effort coincided with the reappearance of more than four dozen native bird species in the restored streetscape.
As the block’s appearance and microclimate changed, neighbors took notice and many adopted the same approach. What began with a few willing households grew into a neighborhood practice: roughly 75% of the block’s residents implemented the curb basins and plantings. The expanded canopy and vegetation also produced a measurable cooling effect. During a demonstration, an infrared thermometer reading showed a stark difference between sun-exposed asphalt and a shaded surface below the trees — about a 30-degree Fahrenheit gap, with the heated asphalt registering around 127 degrees and shaded areas near 96 degrees.
Lancaster did not keep the work clandestine indefinitely. He revealed the modifications to city officials, a step taken explicitly to help other neighborhoods replicate the approach. The city responded by changing how it dealt with stormwater on residential streets: the curb-cut basins that had once been effectively prohibited became an accepted and promoted practice in that jurisdiction. The municipality introduced a $2,000 rebate for homeowners who install similar basins on their streets and established a departmental program, referred to as 'Storm to Shade,' to oversee basin construction and implementation.
The project’s scope has broadened beyond the original cohort of homeowners. Young people on the block have helped expand basin construction and plant more trees, contributing to an intergenerational effort to reshape the urban landscape. Leaders of the initiative describe a long-term objective of bridging tree canopies from one side of the street to the other, creating continuous shade and habitat. What began as an illegal experiment in capturing free water has, over thirty years, been scaled into a neighborhood system of stormwater capture, food production and urban cooling — supported now by municipal incentives and oversight and practiced by the majority of residents on the block.
Brad Lancaster shared the new video alongside a fundraiser for the rain-irrigated native food forestry project, noting that the first $15,000 raised in two weeks would be matched by a grant to expand the work. The neighborhood is known as Dunbar Springs. (via @WaterHarvester on X and harvestingrainwater.com)
The City of Tucson’s Storm to Shade program was formally approved by Mayor and Council in 2019 and rolled out as a city program beginning in 2021 to scale and institutionalize the curb-cut and basin approach.
Storm to Shade is housed within Tucson Water’s Conservation and Stormwater Resources Division and is managed by Blue Baldwin; the program is funded in part by a small surcharge on Tucson Water customers (reported as roughly $0.13 per 100 cubic feet of water).
According to the program’s recent annual reporting, Storm to Shade now oversees several hundred green stormwater installations across the city—roughly 450 assets—and completed eight new green stormwater capital projects in 2024 while implementing an enterprise asset-management system to schedule maintenance.
The program explicitly uses tools like a Tree Equity Score to prioritize investments in underserved neighborhoods and works with maintenance contractors such as Tucson Clean and Beautiful and partners across city departments (Transportation and Mobility, Parks and Recreation, Housing and Community Development), Pima County, the University of Arizona and local NGOs to design, build and maintain green stormwater infrastructure.