Rain Garden - Where Do We Site It?

 Our Shadow Lake Green Team students have been busy doing real-world science as they determine the best location for a rain garden.  The students wrote the following blog post to share their experiences.

We tested 3 rain garden sites at Shadow Lake Elementary in April by digging holes, filling them with water, and measuring how long it took for the water to go into the soil. Before we added water, we checked the soil at the bottom of the hole to see if it was “sticky clay” or “crumbly dirt”—which we wanted to find. We were amazed at how much gravel we found in our Shadow Lake soil!


Here are our findings of the three possible rain garden sites:

• Site 1 (Library Grass/Flowerbed)—excellent drainage and right next to a downspout
• Site 2 (Grassy area between Library and parking lot)—much clay, drained slowest, but could have worked as a site
• Site 3 (Grassy area with flowering cherry tree)---also had excellent drainage, but not near a downspout

Thanks to Green Team Leaders,  Liz White and Sue Chase 

and the SLES Green Team students for this blog post!