Making a rain garden

This new little garden is flooded after the storm - but no worries because it is a rain garden and this is meant to happen. The idea is to take water off the road - hence the kerb cuts to allow water to flow into the three new sunken gardens along the grass verge. Fallowfield has poor drainage and floods regularly after heavy rain, but this time there was much less flooding than usual and it dissipated more quickly. The plants need to tolerate both floods and droughts, as that is the weather we get these days.

After the rain, Fallowfield rain garden number 1

These are the first gardens created by Water Sensitive Cambridge, a new partner of Transition Cambridge. We expect there will be lots more to come. Funding came from a National Lottery grant via River Cam Can; plants came from Darwin Nurseries, a local social enterprise; Cambridge City Council and Cambridgeshire County Council have both been very supportive,and gave permission to create the gardens as a pilot on county council land. Finally a big thank you to the volunteers who helped plant the gardens out on 29th March this year. We were a mixed bunch - some old and some very young, stalwarts of Water Sensitive Cambridge and Transition Cambridge, plus residents of the street. It was a fun day and the weather was kind - a bit windy but no rain.

Planting out the gardens on 29th March.

You can read more about the project, and rain gardens in general on the Water Sensitive Cambridge website.