Prairie Rivers Network Volunteers Come Together to Create Rain Garden at Habitat for Humanity Home

On Saturday May 5th, volunteers from the Champaign-Urbana area will create a rain garden at a newly-completed Habitat for Humanity home in Champaign.  Rain gardens are bowl-shaped gardens that collect rain water from downspouts, sidewalks, and other hard surfaces that do not absorb water.  Runoff that might normally flow into the street and down the storm drain is instead pooled within the garden and quickly taken up by plants and soil.  The plants and soil also trap pollution that the rain water picks up from lawns, parking lots, and streets.  Rain gardens reduce local flooding and pollution, while providing a unique landscaping feature that attracts butterflies, birds, and other wildlife.

Spearheading this effort is Prairie Rivers Network, a Champaign-based non-profit organization that works to protect Illinois waterways.  Prairie Rivers Network promotes rain gardens because they benefit communities by keeping water clean.  According to Stacy James of Prairie Rivers Network, “Many people do not realize that water going down the storm drains in our community does not get treated by sewage treatment plants.  Instead, storm water empties into our local streams, and carries with it soil and chemical pollutants that are picked up from yards, parking lots, and streets.  The flooding and pollution that result have negative impacts on streams and the plants and animals living there.”

Prairie Rivers Network has been giving presentations on rain gardens to local groups since January of this year, and is now giving members of those groups the opportunity to actually install a rain garden.  Volunteers will help dig, shape, mulch, and plant the rain garden.  This is the second time in two years that Prairie Rivers Network has collaborated with Habitat for Humanity of Champaign County to create a rain garden in the yard of a willing new homeowner.  “This has been an exciting opportunity for us to install rain gardens in yards that have not yet been landscaped, and to provide new homeowners with a unique garden of native and showy plants.  We also hope that our volunteers will be more motivated to install rain gardens in their own yards” said James.

Members of the community who want to learn more about rain gardens can call the Prairie Rivers Network office at 217-344-2371.

Contact Info: 

Stacy James , 217-344-237

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