Rain Gardens to the Rescue

Restoration and Rain Gardens 2025 Report

 Thanks to generous supporters like you, Friends of the Rouge continues to expand the reach and impact of restoring the Rouge River watershed with Rain Gardens. In 2025, your contributions helped power 12 new rain gardens across the watershed, along with 4 additional native flower and pollinator gardens—bringing more beauty, more habitat, and more stormwater solutions to the neighborhoods that need them most.

This year’s work has been especially meaningful in communities like Southwest Detroit, River Rouge, and Dearborn’s Southend, where residents face disproportionate flooding and pollution from nearby industry. With your support, these neighborhoods gained:

• 11,863 square feet of new rain gardens
• 57,064 gallons of stormwater storage per storm
• 232,630 square feet of drainage area now capturing and filtering runoff
• 10,197 native forbs and grasses planted, along with 41 shrubs and 1,286 new trees
• 4 new native plant gardens totaling 6,360 square feet

Every one of these installations represents a home protected, a street beautified, and a community strengthened.

Throughout the June training series, participants learned how rain gardens work, how to design their own, and how to care for them longterm. This year’s class brought together a passionate group of residents eager to take action for cleaner water and healthier neighborhoods. At the final workshop, each participant presented a custom garden design—plans that will soon come to life with native plants, volunteer support, and the tools and materials provided through your generosity.

As heavy rainstorms become more frequent, the need for green infrastructure grows. Your support ensures that more families can protect their homes, more pollinators can find habitat, and more neighborhoods can flourish with native plants and cleaner water.

With increasingly frequent, heavy rainstorms, we need your support more than ever to help our communities stay healthy by managing stormwater. Thank you for your continued support of Rain Gardens to the Rescue!

Links:

• https://therouge.org/rain-gardens-to-the-rescue/
• https://therouge.org/master-rain-gardener/
• https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/redford-townships-new-rain-garden-will-prevent-flooding-soak-up-gallons-stormwater

Friends of the Rouge, Redord Township, and corporate and community volunteers came together to create a huge rain garden in Redford Township’s Claude Allison Park.  The nearly 4,500 sq. ft. rain garden is designed to capture and temporarily store nearly 30,000 gallons of rainwater every time it rains.  This prevents a staggering 586,000 gallons of rainwater from flowing into the Township’s combined sewer system annually!  The result – less sewage flowing into the Rouge River and less sewage water backing up into residential basements.  The garden also provides beauty and interest to park users and critical habitat for our declining pollinator species (birds, bees, butterflies, moths and other beneficial insects).  That’s a win for everyone!

Simple solutions, such as the Claude Allison Park rain garden, are relatively low cost and engage the community in healthy activities where they learn of actions that they can take at home to be part of the solution to Rouge River and Great Lakes pollution.  Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community to restore a river.  Rain gardens or nature-based solutions are the answer. 

Friends of the Rouge put Rain Gardens to the Rescue™ at dozens of additional sites across Metro Detroit in 2025.  These projects engaged thousands of volunteers in creating 18,000 sq. ft. of gardens that provide 52,146 gallons of stormwater storage and prevent nearly 600,000 gallons of rainwater from flowing into sewer systems to help alleviate downstream flooding and protect families from having to cleanup basements after the flood and worry about dangerous mold in their homes. 

Join us for our next rain garden installations, tree plantings and maintenance parties in Dearborn, Detroit, Highland Park, Hamtramck, Plymouth, Redford Twp., Canton Twp., and more.  Visit www.therouge.org to learn more. 

Links:

• Nonprofit & community team up to create rain garden with native
• Friends of the Rouge website