On Saturday, October 24, 2009, Lance and Julia, AmeriCorps members, and Steve Johnson, director of MRCN, met at the Bluffs senior care facility to have a work day on their rain garden. We joined Laura Christianson, activities director at the Bluffs, and began talking about what we wanted to accomplish that day and what more there was to do in the future at the Bluffs Rain Garden. This rain garden is a unique project, as it is so large! The garden was dug by a front loader/bulldozer type of equipment, and runs the length of the building, about 100 feet by 10 feet wide. Obviously we wouldn’t be able to plant and cover this whole area in one day.

We focused our efforts on the back end of the garden, planting on a berm, which was holding back about 1000 gallons of rainwater from the previous days. The berm backs up to a creek and wooded area, so it was most important to get some native plants in there to start holding down the soil and preventing erosion into that creek. We gingerly moved around the edge of the pond, many times almost falling in, but that’s what makes it exciting! Three citizen volunteers joined Laura and the MRCN crew, and we made short work of planting sedges, flowers, a button bush and a tree.

After working for about 2 hours and getting our feet quite muddy, we had done all there was to do for the moment. With some more planning, perhaps some more grading the swale for water flow, it will be time to add large rocks, seed and cover with mulch for the winter. What a great rain garden! When complete, it will prevent 1000s of gallons of rain water runoff from entering the creek behind their building, and eventually the streams and rivers beyond.