Pearl Visits Rain Gardens in the Watershed
- ruby513
- Jul 22
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 24
Missisquoi River Basin Association has planted three rain gardens in the Missisquoi Watershed since 2020. To learn more about rain gardens and to see how they are doing, Pearl headed out. But first, Pearl had a few questions she needed answered.
What is a rain garden?
A rain garden is a specially designed garden that collects rainwater from driveways, parking lots, roofs, and other surfaces. Water is held temporarily by the garden and slowly soaks into the ground. This prevents the water from flowing into storm drains and helps to reduce runoff and pollution. Rain gardens are typically built in a shallow depression or basin in the landscape.
What is in a rain garden?
Rain gardens are planted with native plants to the specific region and pollinator plants. Rain gardens can be planted all over the world, so the types of plants may differ. Some native pollinator plants in Vermont that may be good for a rain garden include bee balm, coneflower, blueberry, and blue stem grass.
Why plant a rain garden?
Rain gardens improve water quality, conserve water, reduce erosion and flooding, and create habitat. Rain Gardens allow runoff from impervious surfaces, or very saturated landscapes, to collect and infiltrate into our water table. Additionally, rain gardens create a natural landscape for properties; creating a wonderful habitat to pollinators, birds, butterflies, and other beneficial insects.
What types of rain gardens are there?
Within rain gardens there are many different types. Two of the main ones and the types MRBA has planted are pollinator gardens and edible gardens. Pollinator gardens are planted with native perennial flowers that germinate early, mid, and late season alongside native grasses such as beardtongue, swamp milkweed, and aster. Edible gardens are planted with native, consumable, and perennial herbs that germinate throughout the season. That may include basil, rhubarb, and elderberry.
Now that Pearl has learned all about rain gardens, it was time for her to visit some.
The first rain garden MRBA planted was in 2020 located at Jay Westfield elementary school. This rain garden is an edible garden. Plants that can be found in this rain garden include raspberry, calendula, rosemary, shasta daisy, and apple mint. MRBA staff visits this location during the summers to weed and track progress of the plants. Currently, this rain garden has mainly been taken over by the apple mint and a few raspberry bushes remain. Despite the lack of plant diversity, this still serves its purpose as an edible rain garden. MRBA staff took what they learned from this spot, used that knowledge and expanded upon it for the next one.
The second rain garden planted by MRBA was in 2021 at Richford high school. The Richford rain garden is another edible garden created by the MRBA staff. Plants that can be found in this rain garden include lavender, garlic chives, oregano, mint, and blueberry. During the planting of this rain garden, willow stakes were woven into the foundation for structure and wool pellets placed for moisture retention and weed control. Pearl was pleasantly surprised to see the progress of this rain garden. It may look wild and over grown but this is ideal progress and growth of a rain garden! MRBA is considering implementing the practice of adding wool pellets as the bed in all future rain gardens,
The newest rain garden created by MRBA staff and Leap interns is a pollinator rain garden. Pollinator rain gardens have native perennial flowers that germinate early, mid, and late season alongside native grasses. Some plants found here include beebalm, coneflower, verbena, sneezeweed, and goldenrod. This was planted last summer in 2024 at Riverwalk Park in Montgomery. On Pearl's visit here, she noted the survival of the plants and which ones may need to be replated this season. We are looking forward to continuing to track the progress of this rain garden!
Pearl had a great day checking out rain gardens. She encourages you to go out into your own community and look for rain gardens, maybe even planting one yourself!
