Unless they have a soggy basement or a flood in their yard, most people are completely unaware of the problems caused by stormwater runoff. "Nonpoint source pollution"; these are not exactly household words! However, anyone can take effective actions to help solve stormwater problems. Raising awareness is a major objective of this website.

This area of the site is all about helping you do that, too.

Some of you may be fellow educators, watershed professionals, or stormwater engineers, looking for references and resources for their work. Some of you may be landscapers or gardeners, seeking information about how to explain why it is important to make a rain garden. Others may be students doing research and reports, or you may simply be interested in raising your own awareness. We hope this section will be useful to all of you.

Educational Resources

In this section of the site, we provide educational resources that are inspired by your requests. If you don’t find what you were looking for, feel free to contact us and let us know what you are seeking.  With your help, we can make this resource meet a lot of needs.

Copyright and Citations

The articles, publications and images on raingardens.org, unless otherwise noted, are copyrighted to Rain Gardens of West Michigan with all rights reserved. Copyright law attributes ownership of materials to the writer, to the business or organization for whom it was written, or to the photographer or their emplouer at the moment of creating an image. This means that we legally own what you find on our website, and this ownership is protected by law.

However, we put the information here for you to use. You may reprint and distribute our articles and essays, with permission. Use them to educate others. Update them to suit your region. We request that you cite “courtesy of http://www.raingardens.org “ as the source of the item you are using. We would also very much appreciate a hard copy of the publication in which our materials appeared.

Using raingardens.org information on other web pages is allowed as long as raingardens.org is identified as source or reference, and permission is requested and granted.

We Are Delighted to Receive Donations, Fees, and Contracts!

We are part of WMEAC, a nonprofit organization. Nonprofit does not mean "no money"! We need funds to keep doing what we do here, including keeping this website current and available for public use. We will be grateful for any contribution you make to help us continue our work. That includes hiring us to speak to your group, educate your community, or consult on your rain garden project. We appreciate fees for image use.

Acceptable Use Policy for Images

Images are copyrighted. They may be used by request, with written permission only. Acceptable content use for images: They may be taken directly from the website for school or university student reports, power point presentations by students or professional educators (schools, colleges and universities), and for brochures, presentations, exhibits, newletters or other publications of registered environmental nonprofit organizations.

We have publication quality images of many subjects. Our images have been used to illustrate informational articles in newspapers, books, magazines, public reports and presentations. We charge a fee for image use in such publications.

If you are interested in some of our publication quality images,  contact us and ask for Patricia.

Placing our images on other websites is not allowed without written permission.

We may distribute or sell copies of our powerpoint presentations. In these cases, removal of our images from these presentations for any other use is prohibited without written permission.

Commercial use

It is unacceptable to use our images, articles or content without permission in a profit-making enterprise, such as services, publications or communications materials that are for sale, without formal agreement and/or remuneration to Rain Gardens of West Michigan/WMEAC.

If you would like to discuss using our images or content for a profit-making venture, please contact our offices directly from the contact form on this website.  You may also call Patricia (616-451-3051 ext. 29) or speak to our executive director, Rachel Hood.