Valley youth teach TV audience about rain gardens

PALMER — On a sunny afternoon at Spring Creek Farm off Farm Loop Road, kids rearrange plants in the background as scientists and volunteers talk to a TV crew from the East Coast.

What got the television show excited enough to come to Palmer? Rain gardens.

Wait, rain gardens?

Yup.

“This is something that’s catching on all around the country,” said Frankie Barker, an environmental planner with the Mat-Su Borough.

Catherine Inman, who runs a business called Mat-Su Conservation Services, explained that this particular rain garden collects water from the downspout coming off the roof of one of the farm buildings and reuses it to water the garden.

“It’s a simple rain garden to pull the water away from an older building,” Inman said.

Getting the crew up here — they’re with a show called Aqua Kids — was a relatively easy task, said Katrina Mueller, fisheries outreach coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“I had e-mailed them and just asked if they’d been to Alaska before,” she said.

Turns out they hadn’t, but they wanted to.

Before long, she was helping coordinate an itinerary, including stops in Kenai and Mat-Su. In addition to the rain gardens, they’ll be talking about fish passage projects and streambed restoration with state and local officials, scientists and volunteers.

One of those volunteers was Zachary Neubauer, a high school student who will be part of the inaugural class at Alaska Middle College this fall.

“I mainly talked about why it was important for students to be involved in these kinds of projects,” Neubauer said.

He said that helping install rain gardens gave him a better appreciation for the natural world and his surroundings. That interest was something he shared with his cohort.

“I think all students there have an inherent interest in waterways,” he said. “It really helped fuel the passion for those.”

Aqua Kids — aquakids.tv — airs on CBS (Channel 11) at 7:30 a.m., Saturdays. It’s an educational program aimed at kids. The show’s website probably sums it up best:

“Aqua Kids motivates young people to take an active role in preserving aquatic environments and wildlife, by showing how other kids just like them can do the same. Whether it’s saving sea turtles or participating in a beach cleanup, the Aqua Kids demonstrate the real and lasting contribution children can make in protecting the future of their community and the world.”

Neubauer certainly fits the bill for “kids just like them” helping preserve aquatic environments.

But rain gardens also fit the bill conservation-wise.

Barker said plants in rain gardens — locally occurring plants, by the way — filter out pollutants from the runoff. Which, of course, keeps those pollutants out of local streams and lakes. Inman said it’s green infrastructure — plants — rather than gray infrastructure — concrete drainage canals.

Barker said the borough has installed 10 public rain gardens in places as varied as Wonderland Park and Cottonwood Creek Elementary. There’s also a program to help private parties. The borough can split the installation costs with the homeowner and contribute up to $500.

They’re pretty simple to construct. She said the key is to dig down, remove absorbent soils and replace them with sandy soils or even gravel.

The goal, Inman said, is summed up in the slogan printed on magnets and stickers the rain garden program distributes:

“Slow it down. Spread it out. Soak it in.”

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.