Rain Gardens

Photo courtesy of Stewardship Partners

Farm News

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we don’t just watch the rain fall day in and day out. We embrace all the many ups and downs it brings. One problem we have attacked at a city/state and private level is to create rain gardens that prevent pollution from entering local waterways.

Rain gardens are part of the Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) solution, which makes our homes, neighborhoods and environment more green by capturing and cleaning pollutants from road, roof and parking lot runoff before it hits the waterways of Puget Sound. Many residential home owners and businesses have taken on this mission to facilitate a sustainable solution to capturing pollutants. As described by Stewardship Partners, “Rain gardens are a beautiful landscape amenity that help address our regions single largest water quality threat: runoff pollution. Like a sponge, a rain garden allows runoff to be soaked up, filtering out pollutants while recharging ground water instead of flooding the Snoqualmie River.”

On February 3, 2018, Stewardship Partners along with the Snoqualmie Tribe will commemorate the installation of the Carnation Elementary School rain gardens, a few minutes down the road from our farm with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, planting and maintenance party. In 2015, King County Flood Control District honored Stewardship Partners with a grant to work with the third grade class to design and install two rain gardens on their campus.

Rain gardens are not new to Seattle and surrounding areas as the Rain Wise Program affiliated with Seattle Public Utilities has implemented an ambitious goal. They have set out to manage 700 million gallons of runoff a year by 2025. Recent scientific studies have determined that polluted runoff is the biggest threat to water quality in the Puget Sound. Please join in the fun on February 3rd by contacting Stewardship Partners (stewardshippartners.org).

Other helpful links to get involved in conservation:
12000raingardens.org
700milliongallons.org

Don’t forget to find us on Instagram @fullcirclefarms.