Rain garden project brings community together for good cause

MEADOW LAKES — What looks like a typical Alaska flower garden filled with bluebells, geraniums, roses, lilacs and ferns is actually a strategically placed storm water system known as a “rain garden.”

And at the Birch Creek Villas senior housing complex east of Pittman Road off Karen Street Saturday, it was deemed the best way to solve a drainage problem created by the parking lot and roof design.

“This is a great way to slow it down, spread it out and soak it back into the ground before it runs off the hill and causes more erosion,” Catherine Inman, of the Wasilla Soil and Conservation District, said of the water at the complex that has been ponding in the yard before shooting off a steep ledge. “This is also a great way to naturally replenish the groundwater.”

Beginning two years ago at the Mat-Su Borough level when environmental planner Frankie Barker submitted an $800,000 grant application to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the Birch Creek Villas project is one of several such rain garden demonstration projects in the Valley, Inman said.

The first was at Cottonwood Creek Elementary, then Big Lake Elementary, Iditapark in Wasilla, and at the Valley Community for Recycling Solutions facility next month.

Eventually, the borough would like to expand the concept to private homes as has been done in Anchorage through the Municipality of Anchorage’s cost share program. For now, however, efforts are on getting the word out about natural, ecologically friendly methods of capturing and using storm water.

Inman worked with Meadow Lakes EPA representative Matt LaCroix, the Meadow Lakes Community Council, Meadow Lakes Seniors, the Meadow Lakes Bloomers Garden Club and local landscape architect Eric Morey of Sustainable Design Group to make this rain garden happen.

“It’s such a positive thing to see this kind of effort happening in the Valley,” Patti Fisher of the Meadow Lakes Bloomers said Saturday while taking a break from planting flowers donated by the garden club and taken from nearby woods. “We just want to keep on doing things that positively impact our community.”

The project involved the excavation of about 300 square feet of dirt, grass and soil more than 2 feet deep and the installation of a half-sand, half-soil mixture before planting about 100 water-absorbing flowers and plants in an oval next to the senior complex’s fenced, raised vegetable gardens.

It sits smack-dab in the drainage path of the parking lot’s water runoff.

“It may look like just a beautiful garden with plants and decorative rocks on top, but to my storm water eyes, it’s actually a beautiful drainage pit,” Inman said. “Underground is really where it’s functioning.”

On top is mulch donated by the city of Wasilla that was left over from another rain garden at Iditapark. Family-owned Butte nursery Seed-N-Tree Farms also gave discounts on materials, and Rock Ridge Services did the excavation at a “huge discount,” Inman said.

Landscape architect Morey said he’s done similar rain gardens all over the country and is happy to be helping the local community discover their benefits.

“Ideally, you want this to be twice this size, so we’re hoping to expand on it down the road,” said Morey, who recently returned from serving in Afghanistan. “Eventually, it will bleed back into the forest and the forest will bleed into it. I’d also like to see some benches put in so it’s easier to enjoy.”

Since the rain garden is comprised of native vegetation, it should be low maintenance, he said. It shouldn’t need additional watering and will be able to absorb whatever water naturally comes its way.

“We’d like to see people start putting these sorts of things in their own yards, even if on a lower scale,” Morey said.

For Texas transplant Bobbi Baker, who lives in the Birch Creek Villa closest to the rain garden, it’s a nice way to get her gardening fix.

“I miss my flower garden back home, but I’m loving this,” Baker said. “The plants are a lot different here, so this has been a learning experience for me. I just finished my own garden last night and I have a lot of the same plants in it. I’m still a little sore from that project, but I still managed to put about eight plants in the rain garden.”

The mother of Mat-Su Borough School District Assistant Superintendent Deanna Paramo, Baker said she’s happy to finally be near her daughter and two granddaughters after visiting from Texas for the past 20 years.

“I love the people here,” the 30-year English and social studies teacher said. “From the time I moved here last July, I immediately joined the garden club and other activities, and I’m teaching summer school at American Charter Academy. This project and how everyone came together on it makes me love it here even more.”

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.