The dog days of August are upon us, so its a good time to think about water, the main source of life for any type of garden (and the source of all life on earth :).  This past Saturday, the George Watts Montessori Public School and Bountiful Backyards, as well as our community partners Good Work & Clean Water NC, collaborated on a 150 square foot rain garden that will utilize the thousands of gallons of water washing off of the school's large roof :

• in ground storage and filtration of stormwater runoff
• habitat for amphibian wildlife in the rain garden itself
• edible plants such as serviceberries and blueberries
• filtration of stormwater that drains in to our collective watershed
• preventing erosion and providing irrigation to a larger edible schoolyard

These same principles can apply to many types of home/public/office buildings, street medians, and within neighborhoods as people continue to seek community solutions to problems that go beyond the current limitations of our thoroughly complex social ecology.  In contrast, many of these regenerative steps are relatively simple to implement, especially with group efforts.  They can also level the tendency toward abstraction of shared difficulties and lead to an immanence of engagment with the land we stand on in the present. 

This Saturday, August 8th, we hope that folks can join us for our third and final workday at the George Watts School from 8AM-1PM as we will complete and plant the rain garden, dig a few annual vegetable beds, and plant fruiting and flowering perennials.  We've got our work cut out for us as there are about 35 cubic yards of materials to move to complete this edible schoolyard, but we have managed to have a lot of fun so far and it'd be great to see some of you all even if its just to say hello!

Below are a couple of paragraphs from Brad Lancaster, who has applied many of the same techniques under quite different circumstances in...New Mexico!!

Thank you all for taking the time with our emails, we'd like to cram people's inboxes less, but there is a lot of exciting stuff happening!

Best

Keith, Sarah, Chris and BB Crew

Bountiful Backyards
Landscapes You Can Eat!
www.bountifulbackyards.com
723 North Mangum Street
Durham, NC 27701
(919)-619-9862

Working Toward Sustainable Community Stormwater Management

In every part of the 48 states, groundwater is being depleted faster than it is replenished. It can't go on--yet the problem seems too big for individual efforts. Wrong. You CAN do something to assure sustainable water, and by planning now, you can see some results by next summer.

In 1994, Brad Lancaster bought a house on a tiny 1/8 acre lot in Tucson, Arizona--annual rainfall 12". The yard was "hot and barren, with a house that could only be made comfortable by paying to mechanically alter its climate." He dug shallow basins and berms. "The rain gently soaked into the soil... and verdant life began sprouting everywhere. Now, our yard is an oasis producing 15 to 25% of our food, and after growing trees and installing solar panels to power fans, we no longer pay a cent to heat and cool our home." After adding a simple, legal graywater system, " Our daily municipal water use dropped from the Tucson residential average of 114 gallons per person per day to to less than 20 gallons per person per day...they were sure our meters were broken."

But did this use of the water deprive others of their supply? Listen to what happened next:

"We wanted to do more. Every time it rained our street turned into a river, fed by runoff from roofs, yards, and pavement. We redirected that runoff to 19 young native trees we planted in the barren public right-of-way ...these now sing with nesting songbirds and offer a beautiful shaded canopy for pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists. Water that once flowed away [into sewers] now supports trees that filter pollutants...as they shade and cool the street. On our 1/8 acre lot and surrounding right-of-way, we currently harvest over 100,000 gallons annually"... primarily within the soil and in replenished aquifers.