Yarbrough Elementary School Rain Garden

Can you dig it? A successful project to construct and plant a rain garden was undertaken by Save Our Saugahatchee, Yarbrough Elementary School - Auburn, AL, Natural Resources Conservation Service, AU Center for Forest Sustainability, and the Alabama Cooperative Extension System.

Rain Gardens

When it rains, pollutants like oil, pet waste, clay, and excess pesticides may wash into our streams, rivers, and lakes. These pollutants can harm aquatic life and make our waters less desirable for activities like swimming, fishing, and boating.

Simple, attractive practices such as rain gardens treat stormwater before it reaches our local waters. Rain gardens are shaped like a bowl and catch stormwater for mini-processing.

Ron Estridge, Save Our Saugahatchee, Donna McFarland, Yarbrough Elementary School PTA, and Principal Nancy Golson agreed to install a demonstration rain garden with funds provided by the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Alabama Cooperative Extension System (through a Section 319 grant from ADEM).

The rain garden is located at the bottom edge of the new playground - Magic Mountain - behind the school. Stormwater that is caught by this bio-retention area will be filitered before it washes into Saugahatchee Creek. Best of all, the rain garden will be convenient to school children and will be used for science classes.

Check out the Yarbrough Elementary School Rain Garden Photo Album (powerpoint presentation)

Yarbrough Elementary School students plant the native vegetation ...

Rain Garden is done!

Details

Construction took 4 hours with 12 volunteers. The total cost of the rain garden was less than $500. That estimate includes soil amendments, mulch, and native plants. The soils where the Yarbrough Elementary School rain garden is located are very clayey and compacted. The rain garden team used top soil, finely shredded pine mulch, and #10 sand screenings (rock sand) to amend the existing soils.

The garden was excavated to a depth of ~ 6 inches at the edges and ~ 1 foot in the center. Sod dug up during rain garden construction was stockpiled and used on a berm that was mounded behind the rain garden. This berm will serve to catch stormwater and hold it in the garden.

Plant list: Wax Myrtle (Myrica cerifera), Yaupon Holly (Ilex vomitoria), Spider Wort (Tradescantia), Brown-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia), Swamp Milkweed (Asclepius incarnata), Reed (Juncus), Blue Stem switchgrass (Panicum virginatum) and Lousiana Iris.

Local media joined us on the day students planted the native vegetation. Thanks goes to the Opelika-Auburn News for writing an article that helped share how land use impacts water quality.

Anyone can protect the health of Alabama’s waters by taking small steps such as not applying excess fertilizers or pesticides to their lawns, disposing of oil and trash properly, and keeping a strip of vegetation, riparian buffer, along streambanks that acts as a filter to stormwater pollutants.

Community Based Restoration Initiatives is a partnership between USDA CSREES, Alabama Cooperative Extension System, and the Auburn University Department of Landscape Architecture. Partnerships with Save Our Saugahatchee, Yarbrough Elementary School, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Auburn University Center for Forest Sustainability, and Alabama Department of Environmental Management made this projects possible.