Rain Gardens: Coming soon to your neighorhood

Do you know what happens to rain after it hits your roof?

Did you know that runoff is responsible for 75% of the pollution
that enters our sensitive waterways -
but there is something you can do about it?

People who attended the Annual Meeting of the Lake Forest Park Stewardship Foundation on October 24th learned these things and more.

The guest speaker, Aaron Clark from the 12,000 Rain Gardens Campaign, covered the topic of rain gardens: what they are, how they work, when they don't work and the basics of how to build one.

All seats were filled in the LFP City Council chambers
for the Stewardship Foundation's Annual Meeting.
Photo courtesy LFP Stewardship Foundation

All About Rain Gardens

Report from the Lake Forest Park Stewardship Foundation newsletter

The 12,000 Rain Garden Campaign for Puget Sound is a project of Stewardship Partners and the 12 WSU Extension offices that surround the Sound. Aaron Clark is an environmental scientist with experience conducting, communicating, and applying scientific research for the support of healthy, functioning ecosystems. As the Rain Garden Program Manager, he focuses on building an interdisciplinary network between communities, policy makers, businesses, architects, engineers, and planners. Aaron's work is driven by a belief in the positive impact that humans can and do have on the environment through restoration and stewardship.

Aaron Clark's presentation included a brief overview of municipal stormwater systems. A series of aerial photographs showing development of the Puget Sound region emphasized the incremental loss of "green" (forests and other natural habitats) and the increase in "grey" (roads, parking lots, buildings, homes). 

Rainwater which used to soak into the ground now runs off these hard surfaces much more quickly, damaging habitat with high water flows and carrying pollution in greater volumes directly into streams, lakes and Puget Sound. 

Often raw sewage flows directly into our waterways when drainage pipes are overwhelmed in storm events. 

Rain gardens are beautiful landscape features designed to collect rainwater and allow it to filter into the ground onsite, rather than runoff and add to pollution and flooding. The basic premise behind the 12,000 Rain Gardens Campaign is that property owners can do their part, one yard at a time, and collectively many rain gardens will have a positive impact to improve the health of our waterways.

The LFP Stewardship Foundation is pleased to help bring the 12,000 Rain Gardens Campaign to Lake Forest Park. Rain gardens are part of a proactive approach to the flooding and water quality challenges we face here in our watershed. The City of LFP has expressed interest in promoting rain gardens, perhaps starting with a demonstration garden on city property, and offers environmental mini-grants which may help residents with installation costs.

A rain garden looks like a flower bed
Photo courtesy LFP Stewardship Foundation

Aaron emphasized that correct rain garden design and placement is crucial to success.

There have been some highly publicized rain garden project failures due to design or installation errors, but there have been far more successes.

Aaron showed photos from successful neighborhood projects, where several homeowners on one street built their rain gardens together in a coordinated effort and saw significant improvement in flooding problems.

The following link is a short video produced by KCTS9 about rain gardens recently installed in West Seattle: "Neighbors Fight Stormwater Pollution by Building Rain Gardens."

The 12,000 Rain Gardens Campaign website has detailed information and links to resources, including certified contractors who can help you with all or part of designing and building an effective and beautiful rain garden.

Their website also includes a short "how-to" tutorial on building your own. 

Attendees at the Annual Meeting were able to take home a copy of the excellent guidebook, the WSU Rain Garden Handbook for Western Washington. We hope to soon have more copies available to our members, but in the meantime, a PDF copy of that handbook is available online.

Aaron shared some other great resources on rain gardens, including:

• The Washington Stormwater Center
• WSU Extension's Raingarden site
• Wikipedia
• University of Connecticut's NEMO Network

The LFP Stewardship Foundation is volunteer-run. Sign up for their email list by emailing to stay informed about environmental topics important to our own watershed and beyond.

More information about the Lake Forest Park Stewardship Foundation.