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Community Corner

Rain Gardens: Managing Storm Runoff And Preventing Pollution

A Prince George's environmental innovation grows in popularity

Two new rain gardens flank the one-way portion of Hamilton Street, near the entrance to Magruder Park.

Installed earlier this year, these drainage gardens contain a dry creek bed of stones in the center whose margins are planted with a number of grasses and plants, including the attractive purple-cone flower Rudbeckia and the blue-flowered spider plant, Trascandantia.

Rain gardens, or bio-retention cells, are low impact development installations that feature percolating layers of pebbles, sand, soil and mulch planted with carefully selected vegetation. This vegetation can include grasses, flowering plants, sedges, shrubs and small trees. What these plants have in common are two qualities -- they can withstand the dry and wet conditions of storm water run off and they can absorb pollutants into their biomass, thereby preventing dispersal into the watershed.

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Plants that can absorb pollutants like hydrocarbons and heavy metals are know as phyto-remediators --  pollution uptake by green plants.

Research by Allen Davis at the University of Maryland confirms the remediation abilities of many rain garden plants. Davis, an environmental engineering professor, has been studying rain gardens and other bio-retention techniques since the early 1990s. His work is in tandem with the development of rain gardens in Prince George's County. 

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Larry Coffman, then director of the Prince George's County Department of Natural Resources first proposed the use of rain gardens as a low impact alternative to traditional, built storm water management. 

Coffman's ideas resulted in the Somerset development rain gardens, an extensive and attractive network of environmentally sensitive storm water management bio-retention cells. Davis' work confirmed the effectiveness of these "human-built meadows" to both control storm water run off and prevent pollution from entered the Chesapeake Bay.

The Hamilton Street gardens were designed in part by Robert Freeman.

"The dry creek is a component especially good for the moderate slope of that intersection," he said.

UMCP graduate and former City of Hyattsville outdoor work crewman, Freeman appreciated the opportunity to apply theory from his classes to a design challenge.

Rain gardens in Hyattsville are part of a broader plan in the city and other Route 1 communities to protect the Anacostia watershed. 

Look for more rain gardens in Hyattsville soon, including some installations near the construction zone for the new playground and rehabbed tennis courts in Magruder Park. 

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