Cities across the US are competing to install 10,000+ rain gardens as part of community-wide campaigns — Seattle is looking for 12,000 near the Puget Sound; Kansas City, Mo is creating 10,000; and Sustainable Jersey City thinks 11,000 is about the right number for Jersey City.
What’s even more interesting is that these are being seen as community engagement and revitalization projects. Jersey City’s is indeed “crowd-sourced”:
This was the first time crowd-sourced funding on ioby.org was used to get our grass-roots efforts physically into the ground. The over-arching idea of using green infrastructure to reduce our flooding and CSO problem is really gaining traction both around the country and in Jersey City. In fact, SJC has partnered with P.S. 5 to turn some of their great rain capturing ideas into reality.
Please help us reach our goal of raising $6,000 to install 80 feet of rain garden planters in front of the school and a 300 gallon rain barrel collecting water from the roof.
http://sustainablejc.org/wordpress/2014/08/crowd-sourced-rain-garden-installed/
We’ve tweeted our congrats to SJC, and we salute its founder and tireless animator, Debra Italiano.
This kind of initiative brings many of our general principles home to our own local community — we’re looking to have our neighborhood, Liberty Ridge in The Hills, convert its detention basin to a rain garden. So far we’re just at the talking stage, but it’s a great example of a “regenerative community solution” that we can implement in our own back yard.
There are extensive resources online, e.g., http://www.12000raingardens.org/resources/, and a manual specifically for New Jersey, http://www.npsnj.org/pages/nativeplants_Rain_Gardens.html for any who wish to follow our example.
