By Jon Musselman, Upstream Municipal Watershed Planner
TTF hosted a Rain Garden workshop at Abington Friends School (AFS) last week. This program was in response to requests from upstream watershed residents! We had a standing-room-only turnout of homeowners interested in learning how to manage stormwater on their property while creating a beautiful landscape at the same time. AFS was a perfect place for this program, as the newest TTF rain garden is behind the Lower School at the headwaters of the Jenkintown Creek.
Rod Ritchie, Technical Director, AKRF, Inc. and TTF Board President, presented an overview of how rain gardens work, and the various criteria needed to design, build and plant them. Homeowners themselves can often build rain gardens, and there are available resources to help tailor a project to individual sites. An engineer is typically not needed for a residential rain garden. Other homeowners may want to consider hiring a landscaping contractor — it’s important to make sure that the contractor fully understands the soil, sizing, drainage and planting concepts that make for successful installation.
You can view Rod’s An Introduction to Rain Gardens presentation here.
For information on the four rain gardens that TTF has created (at Vernon Park in Germantown, the Olney Recreation Center, Abington Friends School, and Manor College) visit Our Projects.
