The Rain Garden at NVCC is Complete!

Students planting

We finished planting the rain garden at Naugatuck Valley Community College on Monday, April 28, 2015 and it came out beautifully! We worked with the diverse and well thought out plant selection and design that the students had created earlier in the semester. All of the plants came from Earth Tones Native Plant Nursery and Landscape. A few of those plants included Baptista Australis (Blue Wild Indigo), Hibiscus Moscheutos (Rose Mallow), and Panicum Virgatum (Switch Grass). Unfortunately, we will not be able to see the plants in bloom for another several months. For now, they are still coming out of dormancy as you can see from the picture below with Jenna.  Make sure to keep reading this blog to see pictures of the rain garden after the plants have bloomed! Jenna and I will be heading up to NVCC periodically to check on the rain garden's progress!

Baptista Australis (Blue Wild Indigo)
 in bloom

Jenna in front of completed rain garden

Hibiscus Moscheutos (Rose Mallow)
 in bloom

Plants laid out before planting

Planting went fairly quickly as all the students in the class came down to help. Prior to the student's arrival, Jenna, Mike, and I created a type of rip rap out of river jacks to slow water coming into the rain garden from the curb cut. Mike had laid out all the plants in their intended spots prior to planting and had created very nice rock formation near the inflow and outflow pipes of the garden. After all the plants were in their places, we covered them with pots (its very easy to lose the little plugs once they are planted) and mulched the entire rain garden.

Rip rap from curb cut to rain garden

Rock formation at outflow pipe

We are so pleased with the way everything came out. Now go out and plant your rain gardens!

Jeremy