New Branches Charter School rain garden

New Branches Elementary

256 Alger, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Plaster Creek's first rain garden

This rain garden helps protect Plaster Creek, a tributary of the Grand River. The school is located at 256 Alger, between Madison and Division. Visitors should check in at the school office, which is at the east entrance.

Our first school rain garden, this lovely planting was created in 2002 and was part of a garden tour in 2003. We always enjoy working with New Branches elementary because we get such gorgeous pictures of the adorable kids in the garden.  I don't know what magic goes on there, but it sure is a fun school!

Our first rain barrel

The rain garden features a rain barrel kindly donated by Gardener's Supply Company. The rain barrel collects rain from the school roof, and the overflow from the barrel goes into the garden through a lovely river of stones through the lawn. The little stream of stones is lined with landscape fabric. This is a very attractive example of how to get the runoff rain into your garden. It is easy to mow over, and the stones are not big enough to do any damage if they are thrown (kids will be kids!).

As is usual with our rain gardens, we started out with a design (donated by RiverMaid Design) and this is adjusted according to what plants are available and donated.

We found that a great method of getting the plants required is to make a list of the species and numbers we need (with cost and where to purchase them locally) and distribute it to parents. We give the parents two or three weeks to either buy the plants and deliver to the school office, or bring in divisions of plants from their yards.

As the parents deliver plants to the office, the school staff checks off what has been supplied. A day or two before the planting date, we purchase any plants that were not donated. Another great advantage of this technique is that until the planting, the school staff gets to enjoy all the pretty flowers in their office!

We come back once a year to reconnect the students with their rain garden and reinforce the learning objectives for the project. In fall of 2004, we collected seeds from the balloon flowers and the purple cone flowers, which the children put into handmade seed packets to give as gifts to their parents. One again, the cutest kids in the cutest pictures!

Lessons learned:

People will give you lots of plants. Just ask them.

If you ask, people will often enthusiastically donate plants for rain gardens. Sometimes they are plants you don't really want, but a lot of the time they are wonderful. All the black-eyed susans for this site were donated by parents, and they are blooming happily to this day.

University students ROCK!

Four college-age students (Grand Valley State University) can work with sixty tiny elementary students to dig a whole garden from turf to planting-ready in two hours. University students ROCK!

Our school education process was debuted at this school, and we discovered that the parents enjoy doing the art work pre-evaluation as much as the kids do! 

This garden is owned by New Branches Elementary School, and maintained by school staff and by Michigan State University Master Gardener volunteers. Mulch and soil improvements were donated by Compost Soil Technologies, Zeeland, Michigan. Plants were provided by grant funds and donations from families and gardeners. Pumpkins were donated by the kids! They wanted pumpkins, they planted them.