News

Rain Gardens Provide Storm Water Management - and Opportunities for Master Gardeners

A simple concept for managing what happens to rainwater in urban and suburban landscapes, called a rain garden, is gaining in popularity across the country. A group of Virginia Cooperative Extension faculty members and Master Gardener volunteers are working together to bring this environmentally friendly idea to homeowners in Southeast Virginia.

“A rain garden is really a big puddle,” says Laurie Fox, horticulture associate at the Hampton Roads Agricultural Research and Extension Center (HRAREC) in Virginia Beach. “More technically, it is a bio-retention basin, an area that collects water runoff from impervious surfaces like roofs, driveways, and parking lots and allows that water to be slowly absorbed back into the soil rather than running off into storm water systems.”

Fox explains that rain gardens are typically about 8 inches deep and are planted in an area where rain runoff would naturally occur. The site is amended with lots of organic matter and includes plants that can tolerate both wet and dry conditions. Fox notes that rain gardens are designed so that rainwater does not remain on the surface for more than two days to avoid mosquito problems that can occur with standing water.

   

Agriculture and natural resources Extension agents Lynette Swanson in Norfolk, Susan French in Virginia Beach, Mike Andruczyk in Chesapeake, and Cynthia Wyskiewicz in Portsmouth thought that a demonstration rain garden would be an excellent project for their Water Stewards – advanced-level Master Gardeners – in the region who were already learning and teaching about urban water-quality topics.

The rain garden project gave the Hampton Roads area Water Stewards an opportunity to complete their advanced training and, by planning, installing, maintaining, and teaching about the HRAREC garden, an opportunity for contributing service hours as well.

“The agents and the Master Gardeners were very excited about this project, because it gave the volunteers an opportunity to put what they learned to work right away,” says Swanson. “Having completed the project themselves, the Master Gardeners feel more confident in teaching homeowners how to plan and install their own rain gardens.” In fact, one of the volunteers will be teaching about rain gardens at the Norfolk Botanical Garden this spring.

The project was funded, in part, by grants from the City of Virginia Beach and the Virginia Department of Forestry. Both groups were interested in supporting a public demonstration garden that would help homeowners learn how to install a rain garden in their own landscapes.

In its first four months, the garden received more than 800 visitors. “The rain garden has already given Master Gardeners and Extension agents new ideas for training and educational programs, and we know that several visitors have planted their own gardens based on what they saw here,” adds Fox.