Rain Gardens to the Rescue

We thank you for another great year of rain gardens! Generous support received through GlobalGiving and with funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Friends of the Rouge awarded eleven (11) rain gardens to Detroit sites participating in our 2023 rain garden programming.  Throughout the summer months, staff and community volunteers were hard at work installing rain gardens at eight (8) residential homes and three (3) larger, institutional gardens – at a church, a school, and a community park – all across the City of Detroit.  Over 135 friends, family, and neighbors joined garden plantings to learn hands-on what rain gardens are and why they are so important for the community and the environment.  With your support through GlobalGiving, we were able to add more plants and create larger rain gardens across Detroit in 2023. 

Rain gardens, designed by residents and with support from stormwater and landscape design experts, have added 3,527 square feet of native plant rain gardens that will capture and store 17,216 gallons of stormwater every time it rains.  The addition of 1,776 native perennial plant plugs, 71 native shrubs, and 3 native trees across the gardens are managing stormwater and providing valuable green space, along with habitat for pollinators, birds, and wildlife – all year ‘round!  Replacing shallow-rooted lawn grass with deep-rooted native plants within rain gardens allows for cost-effective and natural water management, helps to reduce localized flooding, and prevents sewage from combined sewer overflows from dumping into our local waterways.  These gardens also educate neighbors with signs about the rain garden, and can act as a living classroom for people of all ages.

Emma, a teacher at Thirkell Elementary-Middle School applied for a rain garden because they had flooding issues in the basement kindergarten classrooms in the past.  She wanted to teach her students more about native flowers, and encourage the students to get outside and connect with nature.  There was ample room between the school building and the existing raised bed food gardens, that the students tended and shared with the community.  Thirkell was awarded a garden, and with the help of volunteers, we installed a 600 square foot garden at the end of June.  It is now managing almost 2,300 gallons of water off the school’s roof every time it rains.  Emma’s garden design includes multiple walking paths through the garden so the students and residents can interact and see all the different plants and insects, giving them a space to be surrounded by nature.  The center of the garden features two pawpaw trees in hopes of adding this fruit to their expanding edible food available in the garden space.  The addition of native plants in the rain garden will support even more pollinator visitors that will benefit the raised bed gardens’ food production.  Emma said the students were so excited to come back this school year with this wonderful new addition to the school, and they love walking through the garden every day before school starts.  Emma has a bird’s eye view of the garden from her classroom on the second floor.  She and her students have already enjoyed watching the garden change and grow, just like their young minds!  The rain garden will continue to work hard, even in the winter months, managing melting snow and providing habitat for overwintering insects and providing food for birds.

In addition to the rain gardens in Detroit, we installed five (5) more rain gardens in the neighboring communities of Redford, River Rouge, and Dearborn’s Southend neighborhood.  These communities, along with the City of Detroit, are disproportionately impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.  In addition, nearby industrial facilities threaten water quality, air quality, and human health.  These communities have flooding events more frequently than their neighbors because of their high percentage of impervious surfaces like buildings, roads, and parking lots.  They are also downstream in the watershed, receiving large volumes of water that old sewer infrastructure is ill-equipped to handle and properly manage.  As large rain events become more common due to climate change, rain gardens are a low-cost solution to managing urban stormwater and preventing river pollution.

We thank you for your continued support of our work as we expand our rain garden education across Southeast Michigan, install more rain gardens and native plantings, and better our communities and our environment!

Links:

• Learn more about Friends of the Rouge
• Learn more about building a rain garden!