School's rain garden a beautiful solution to puddle problem
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - April showers bring May flowers - but at Childs Elementary School, those showers have been a bit of a problem.
When it rains particularly hard, the grounds of the school tend to flood, creating large puddles and marshy, squelchy spots around the playground.
That's why the school has installed a rain garden, designed to catch and use excess rainfall to keep the playground dry, and look beautiful while doing it. Ellee Spier, the parent volunteer who led the charge on the project, hopes the rain garden will become a beautifying and educational feature that Childs students and community members will enjoy.
Spier has been working on the project since last summer. While it is certainly the largest project she's worked on for the school, it's not the first: Last year, she helped install a composting system after students wanted to put the cafeteria's scraps and leftovers to good use, such as helping to create nutrient-rich soil for the school's vegetable garden.
That composting system was installed last spring, but when the grounds flooded, the compost system flooded, too.
"I just saw there was a bigger problem," Spier said. As it just so happened, she had been researching rain gardens because she wanted one at her own home.
She remembers thinking, "I've never done this before" - never built a rain garden, never written a grant application to secure funding for a project, never led a volunteer effort at the school on this scale.
But, she thought, "I like challenges. Let's do it."
With the Sycamore Knolls Neighborhood Association, she sought and received a $15,000 grant from Bloomington's Housing and Neighborhood Development office, as well as other grants and donations.
She reached out to local businesses, who gave an outpouring of support in the form of supplies, labor or consulting services. Andy Knust, of BRCJ Civil Engineering, "spent countless hours" designing the rain garden system, Spier said. Altogether, she estimates the project received more than $28,000 in in-kind donations.
And since the project's groundbreaking in late April, Spier said, 45 volunteers from the Childs community and surrounding area have pitched in to help with the physical labor.
Last week, Childs hosted a school-wide crowning event: Installment of the rain garden's plants. Every class in the school came out to plant black-eyed Susans, milkweed, goldenrod and other native flora, filling a 65-foot-long, 12-foot-wide dip in the schoolyard with a grand total of 354 plants.
Amanda Figolah's advanced placement environmental science class helped coordinate and advise the elementary students, using expertise gained from their own rain garden at Bloomington High School South.
When they weren't putting their own plants into the soil, marked with a tag naming the student who planted it, students went searching for tags bearing the names of their friends and siblings. Others played tag or raced across the new 65-foot-long observation deck, with a handicap-accessible ramp.
"The whole thing is just wonderful," said Thomas King, president of the Sycamore Knolls Neighborhood Association, who has put plenty of his own elbow grease into the project.
There is still work to be done. The rain garden will require maintenance and care as the new ecosystem establishes itself.
Educational signs, explaining the science of rain gardens and the different plants present, will be put along the garden over the summer, along with a safety rail.
But when it's finished, members of the Childs community and volunteers hope the garden will not only help with excess water near the playground, but provide a spot that can be used for classroom learning as well as community enjoyment when students are out of school.
"The whole area continues to be an amazing outdoor education space, and it seems to continue to get better each year," said Childs principal Chris Finley.
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Source: The (Bloomington) Herald Times, https://bit.ly/2IGcYCo
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Information from: The Herald Times, http://www.heraldtimesonline.com