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Mettowee River Restoration

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Rain Gardens

Champlain Valley Restoration Nursery

Rain Gardens

The raingarden installed at the Stonebridge Inn in Poultney (see right image) was a joint project of the District, Vermont DEC, and the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps

Rain Gardens are perennial gardens specifically designed to capture rainwater from impervious surfaces, filter it and allow it to permeate into the soil. Impervious surfaces are those such as rooftops, driveways and roads, which don’t allow infiltration of rainwater into soil. In urban areas, impervious surfaces increase rainwater runoff to streams during storms, which causes increased flooding. Impervious surfaces also decrease the amount of rainwater percolating into the soil to recharge groundwater aquifers, decreasing water to streams during dry weather. Studies have shown that it doesn’t take many roads or houses (less than 10% of land area) to cause significant changes to the hydrology and ecology of a stream. (Barnes et al, Towson University).

In addition to the increased quantity of water flowing to our streams during storm events, up to 70 percent of pollution enters streams through rainfall runoff. Runoff carries sand and salt, nutrients, fecal contaminants and other pollutants.

The health of our streams and lakes are impacted daily. Pollution generated by human's daily activities including automobile wastes, road salts and sands, fertilizers and pesticides accumulate on our roads, driveways and parking lots. During rain events all this accumulated pollution is washed down our roads and into storm drains and into our stream and lakes. Pollution is just one half of the problem our streams and rivers are facing. As impervious surfaces, surfaces that water can not penetrate through, increase, less rain water is absorbed by the soil and clean through natural process of plants and microbes. This water instead of being absorbed is transported quickly to our waterways. This flashy slugs of water to the stream erodes the stream channel and destroys aquatic habitat of fish and invertebrates. The large quantity of stormwater entering the stream during rain events becomes an impairment to the streams and lake health

A detailed color brochure explaining more about rain gardens including recommendations on plants to use can be found at www.raingardens.org

Click Here to download a brochure containing information about the Winooski Rain Garden (1MB PDF)