On April 28 Museum of Natural History staff helped the UI Engineers for a Sustainable World build a rain garden in Coralville. It finished raining that morning, so the ground was quite soft and easier for digging. Although, with rain comes lots of mud, and some people weren’t prepared for this (only wearing tennis shoes!).
The UI Engineers for a Sustainable World are no strangers to rain gardens; they implanted many around campus in fact. However this garden was their biggest undertaking, being 2 times as big as any other one they had done before it!
You are probably asking yourself “what exactly is a rain garden?”. A rain garden is a depressed area landscaped with perennial flowers and native vegetation that allows rainwater runoff from impervious surfaces (roofs, driveways, walkways, parking lots, and yards) the opportunity to be absorbed. This reduces rain runoff by allowing stormwater to soak into the ground. The purpose of a rain garden is to improve both water quality and quantity in nearby bodies of water.
Besides getting stuck in the mud a lot, our main job was to help dig a giant hole. This took several hours, but we did it! Once the garden area was level, we filled it back in with an engineered soil of 70% sand and 30% compost.
Now the fun part begins – adding all the plants! You select a variety of native grasses and wild flowers to plant. The best plant mixture consists of 30-60% grasses for structure and the remainder being wildflowers for aesthetics. It’s best to get a variety of plant species due to differential blooming. Then we added the finishing touches of mulch around the plants and garden.
We have had the pleasure of hosting this amazing student group for presentations and now worked closely with them implanting a project. If you would like to learn more information about group, what they are doing and how to get involved visit their website at: http://www.uiesw.org/
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| Sign of a hard days work! |
-Written by Assistant Education Coordinator Ashlee Gloede
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