Community members, including regulars at Bethany Beach Nature Center’s Saturday morning youth programs, recently helped to plant a rain garden outside the center off of Route 26 in Bethany Beach.
The rain garden is unique, explained Sally Boswell, education and outreach coordinator for the Center for the Inland Bays, which has a partnership with the Town of Bethany Beach to offer educational activities at the center. It is unique because it is bigger than most rain gardens, covering much of the east side of the property, following a swale.
The rain garden is surrounded by Filltrex GardenSoxx for storm water management and erosion control, and the garden itself has been embedded with seed.
“This whole thing will be sprouting in the next couple of weeks,” explained Boswell.
The children and community helped plant about 200 plants to get the rain garden started, including red chokeberry, highbush blueberry, swamp azalea and pickleweed. This is the third demonstration rain garden that the Center for Inland Bays has helped with — the Town of Millville has one, and the Town of Dagsboro built one with consulting help from the Center.
For those who might be unfamiliar with the notion, a rain garden is a “garden with a mission.” According to the Center, they are “low-lying vegetated depressions, usually 4 to 8 inches deep, that have absorbent soils to collect stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces and allow water to slowly percolate into the soil.”
Because of the runoff from area parking lots and sidewalks, and because it already follows a swale, the rain garden at the Bethany Beach Nature Center is perfectly placed to have maximum impact. The wetlands behind the center can be spared the gas, oil and waste that can come along with rainwater running off of nearby impervious surfaces, and instead, the garden has time to filter the water, process it and take up some of the toxins before it ever reaches the wetlands area.
“Planting the garden is important because it makes your yard look pretty, and it also collects water from the street and sidewalk and filters it,” explained Rose, age 9, pretty much summing up the lesson of the day.
Grayson, 3, added that they were “planting plants, to grow,” and to make sure to “stay near the blue flag,” a marker marking the deepest level of the garden, where the volunteers were directed to concentrate the plants.
Cassidy, 5, added that they were “learning how to save the earth” by planting more plants each day.
Many of the children had also participated in the planting of a vegetable garden on the property and helped plant a tree for Arbor Day recently, as many are regular attendees of the Saturday programs.
All in all, the day was a success, another hands-on learning experience with nature.
“It’s a perfect location for it,” added Lisa Daisey, who runs the Saturday youth programs at the center. “It looks completely natural.”
Boswell added that they have a newly implemented feature on their Web site, at inlandbays.org, where people can register their own rain gardens. They have the goal of reaching 1,000 registered rain gardens.
