Read our 2025 Year in Review Here
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Read our 2025 Year in Review Here 〰️
TEST PLOT IS A NONPROFIT THAT SUPPORTS
COMMUNITY-LED LANDCARE
Through our hands-in-the-soil approach, Test Plot creates beautiful native plant gardens in degraded urban parks that boost biodiversity, increase fire safety, and build climate resilience.
During monthly workdays, we guide volunteers on an ecological journey, teaching skills in land care, design, and community engagement while cultivating connection to place and to one another.
A community planting day & stormwater resiliency workshop at the Rainbow Canyon Test Plot in LA (Dec 2025)
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
Hands in the soil, the land needs laborers
Cultivate beauty + biodiversity
Hyperlocal, climate-resilient planting
Closed loops
Design through maintenance
Experimentation is good, permission to fail
Research + learn, shared knowledge
Restoration of relationships, restoration as repair
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
“My favorite activity at our plot is observing all the wildlife - birds, insects, gastropods - with hands in plants and soil, while spending time with a few wonderful people. There are murmurs and rising and falling of conversation, interspersed with moments of quiet and focused weeding, a form of meditation and healing from the rest of the week.”
“The greatest success has been seeing endangered species such as the Least Bell’s Vireo, Crotch’s Bumblebee and Monarch Butterfly utilizing habitat created as part of the Test Plot project.”
“Test Plot’s approach demonstrates the profound impact of engaging directly with the land. Their work is an invaluable partner to Studio-MLA allowing us to experiment with ideas and build lasting relationships.”
“For us we were looking for an outlet to be outside, we love our apartment but it’s tiny so we were looking for people with like values, who are interested in the earth, in planting, in consideration of ecosystems”
“Because we’ve bonded to the land here we have more of an investment in the plants and we want them to do well. It requires someone to give their time and that’s valuable. ”
“I like how little stress there is with being involved at the plot. You show up and you get to connect with other people and learn and do work.”
DONATE TODAY
When you give this year, please consider adding Test Plot the organizations that you support with a financial gift. As a young and growing non-profit, Test Plot relies on individual donations to:
Stabilize finances beyond grant cycles.
Allow rapid responses to stewardship needs.
Build long-term community investment in Test Plot’s work.
Expand our mission to include ecological monitoring, research, education, advocacy, documentation, and long-term plot care.
Please choose from the donation and payment methods below. Whether you can give $5 or $5k, we rely on your gifts to thrive. Every contribution is tax-deductible. We’ll send you a donor receipt letter for your records.
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