We did it! Sustainable Seattle is celebrating the installation of five new rain gardens, through its Sustainable Rain program.   This important milestone means we have demonstration gardens at businesses and organizations in the Central District, White Center, West Seattle, and two different locations in Beacon Hill.

We want to thank our participating organizations who came to us asking to participate and worked patiently with us on this new project.   Our participants include Big Al Brewery in White Center, whose rain garden now sits next to their outside beer garden area.   In Beacon Hill, we installed rain gardens at El Centro de la Raza, a Latino cultural center and Helen B Ratcliff, a woman’s transitional prison facility.   Green Plate Special, an educational garden and cooking project in a vacant lot  in the Central District, now has a rain garden to treat the runoff from the kitchen they hope to build soon, thanks to Sustainable Rain.  And in West Seattle, Alexandria Melchior warmly embraced her rain garden for her newly renovated yard at her residence and business property.

We held workshops in each of the neighborhoods to spread the word about the project in the neighborhood and how residents can install their own rain garden.  We announced a rain garden scholarship project to help fund more rain gardens in these neighborhoods and will be installing those rain gardens in the spring and summer of 2012..

The workshops were held at each of the following locations, either at or near one of the installed the rain gardens:

West Seattle  
C&P Coffee Company: 5612 California Ave SW 98136

Beacon Hill 
El Centro de la Raza: 2524 16^th Ave S. 98144  

Central District 
2100 Building: 2100 24^th Ave S. 98144

White Center 
Big Al Brewing: 9832 14^th Ave SW 98106

Each workshop had several presenters who taught the audience about what it takes to propely design and build a rain garden, describing how the gardens work and their amazing effectiveness. The scholarship program was introduced, and pictures and stories from our rain garden projects were described.  Sustainable West Seattle’s presentation included discussion on polluted runoff and Puget Sound.

More About Rain Gardens

Here's out latest blog post with updates

In case you have missed hearing about them, rain gardens are attractive landscape features that remove pollutants from storm water runoff before it reaches Puget Sound.  These shallow depressions are designed to absorb and treat rainwater from paved surfaces such as roofs, parking areas, and sidewalks.   A rain garden has rich soil and usually native plants adapted to changing water levels.   The soil and plants slow down the runoff, thus reducing flooding and overflow in the sewer system.

Sustainable Rain’s gardens are about more than reducing water pollution, however.

“We designed our rain gardens to be more than this,” explained Amy Waterman, project lead of the Sustainable Rain program. “They will be a demonstration, an inspiration for businesses and community members to take the next steps in sustainability.”   Each organization that hosted a rain garden also participated in sustainability assessments.  For these assessments, Sustainable Seattle staff member Aven Frey reviewed the organizations’ practices and recommended other sustainable ideas, including ideas about community engagement and employee well-being.   Reaching out to the community through these workshops and funding of additional rain gardens is another  “next step.”

We want to thank the Russell Family Foundation for funding this project and also our great partners: Homegrown Organics, Alleycat Acres, Stewardship Partners, Rain Dog Designs, and Ground Up/Creatives4Community.   Homegrown  Organics were the primary designers and installers of our rain gardens, with assistance from Alleycat Acres.  Rain Dog Designs provided some technical assistance and did most of the excavations.   Youth from Creatives4Community/Ground Up reached out to businesses and organizations in each of the neighborhoods to help find our participants.  Stewardship Partners also provided technical assistance and will be an integral part of our workshop presentations.   We also had assistance from other groups doing rain garden work: Sustainable West Seattle, People for Puget Sound, Seattle Public Utilities, King County Wastewater Treatment Division, and Duwamish River Clean-Up Coalition.

A big thank you to all of our volunteers who came out to hand-dig a rain garden in West Seattle on a hot August day, as well as all of our volunteers who came out to plant at all of the sites, especially the enthusiastic crew at Helen B. Ratcliff house!

Let us know if you have an interest in learning more about rain gardens or want to know how to get one installed!