Rain Garden Program - 2010 Activities

In 2010 the MOA Rain Garden Program worked with residents, schools, and local

business partners in the public and private sectors to support the construction of over

thirty new rain gardens in the municipality! For the last three years the program has

consistently doubled its participant involvement and rain garden incentive distribution

each year. The program supported seven rain gardens in 2008, fifteen in 2009, and

thirty-one in 2010, for a grand total of fifty-three rain gardens incentivized. The Rain

Garden Program has been offering incentives supported by grant funding from the US

Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) beginning in 2007. This year WMS won a grant from

USFWS to extend the incentive program to support all types of vegetated Low Impact

Development (LID) applications through November of 2012.

Of the thirty-one rain gardens constructed this year, there were six rain gardens

with a high level of community interest and involvement. Two rain gardens were

constructed in partnership with local middle and high schools. Two more gardens were

constructed as demonstration rain gardens in partnership with the Anchorage Parks

Foundation Youth Employment in The Parks program at the local senior center and the

popular Westchester Lagoon Park. Finally, two more rain gardens were incorporated

into municipal pedestrian and park improvement projects at Jewel Lake Park and

Blueberry Road.

Photos: Left, Dimond High School, testing soil saturation rate. Middle, YEP, Westchester

Lagoon pre-construction lecture. Right, Gruening Middle School, checking depth of

excavation.

Education: This year the Rain Garden Program participated in a number of organized

presentation series, summer fairs, and school classroom activities. By attending a

variety of events we were able to reach a wide section of the community. In schools the

Rain Garden Program presented at the Dimond High School Science Career Fair,

Gruening Middle School National Junior Honor’s Society Meeting, Mear’s Middle

School Science Classes, Alaska Pacific University (APU) Sustainability Council and APU

Watershed Management Course. During the summer the Rain Garden Program offered

a seminar at the Alaska Botanical Garden’s Fair and the Houston Middle School Garden

Symposium. We had a table at the local Creek Clean-Up Day, Alaska Department of

Fish and Game Fish Fry Release Educational Event, and at the Spenard Farmer’s Market,

Ask an Expert Booth. For organized training and educational seminars we presented at

the Senior Center Monthly Staff Meeting, the OLE! Hydrology Course Series,

Opportunities for Lifelong Education, the engineering firm USKH organized Low

Impact Development Design Guidance training, the Library Summer Seminar Water

Your Mind, stormwater education presentation with information on native and invasive

plants, and lastly, the Youth Employment in the Parks, Westchester Lagoon, Pre-

Construction Rain Garden Presentation (middle photo above). We also hosted an in-

house training for local contractors and landscaping businesses in the spring.

Site inspections: These are one way the Rain Garden Program verifies the awarded

incentive goes toward a well designed rain garden or LID feature. The bar graph below

illustrates the distribution of site inspections completed during 2010 and groups them by

color based on when they were performed during the building process.

Site Inspections per Month in 2010

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

Apr

il

May

June

July

Aug

ust

Sep

tem

ber

Octobe

r

Insp

ecti

on

s

Pre-Build

Mid-Build

Post-Build

Website: The AnchorageRainGardens.com website has been a valuable tool for

communicating events and furthering education to the public. This year there were a

number of instructional pages added to the website under the Demonstration Rain

Gardens section. Participants have commented that these printable illustrated rain

garden construction examples are the best resource they used during the project. In

addition to the handouts we have added a Google map to the News and Events page.

This map shows visitors the exact location of all demonstration rain gardens in the

MOA. If visitors are interested in touring a couple rain gardens to see what they look

like they can use this map to locate all the rain gardens on public property.

In-Kind Contributions: This year alone the municipal projects that included rain

gardens and rain garden home owners have more than matched the amount of

incentives the Rain Garden Program has been able to award.

Rain Garden Owner's

Contributions MOA Incentives

Awarded In-Kind Hours

of Labor

TOTALS: $163,601.07 $17,624.73 1048

Municipal Project Contributions $145,747.42 $5,982.50 73

School Match via Donations $764.50 $173.09 160

Home Owner's Contributions $9,103.10 $6,969.14 795

Non-Profit Organizations $7,986.05 $4,500.00 20

Website Usage for 2010

Photos: The following page contains pictures of seven rain gardens constructed in the

MOA this year. From left to right and top to bottom the rain garden pictures are:

1. MOA Blueberry Road Pedestrian Improvement, curb cuts direct runoff from the

sidewalk into the rain garden.

2. Private Residential Rain Garden, incentivized by the Rain Garden Program, garden is

filling with runoff collected from the roof gutter system at the time the picture was

taken.

3. MOA Senior Center, Gardens Coordinator and MOA Rain Garden Program

Coordinator sitting just inside the edge of the new public Senior Center rain garden.

4. Dimond High School, AP Environmental Science class standing behind their new

public rain garden.

5. MOA Jewel Lake Park public rain garden.

6. Exemplary Private Residential Rain Garden

7. Gruening Middle School, National Junior Honor’s Society club members exploring the

extent of their excavation job before they filled materials into their new public rain

garden.

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See photo captions on previous page.