Public invited to rain garden workshop at Towson Unitarian

Towson Unitarian Universalist Church has won a grant to produce a rain garden on a slope on its property. . As part of the grant, the public is invited to a workshop to learn how to plan gardens that capture rainwater before it races into local waterways and then help to plant the church's new rain garden.

"The workshop is about educating people and getting them involved in the process," said Jack Leonard, a landscape designer based in Hereford, who has designed the church's rain garden. He is involved in the planting of 10 more area rain gardens this spring, he said.

"Everybody will get information to design their own plantings," Leonard said. "In the end, everybody can walk away proud of what they accomplished."

The new plantings will also include a "bayscape" garden of native plants near the church entrance, as well as the 230-square-foot rain garden farther down the property's slope.

The rain garden is designed to handle up to an inch or so of rain enough to keep most pollutants from going into the Chesapeake Bay watershed, he said. With the combination of earth berms, river rocks and plantings, the water should soak into the ground rather than run down the hill into the stream.

Plants native to the Chesapeake Bay watershed will be used exclusively. Flowering dogwood, inkberry holly, bee balm and goldenrod support local insects and birds, including butterflies and songbirds, Leonard said. Turtlehead, which sprouts flowers that resemble the head of a turtle, will be planted because it is a host plant for the Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly.

Many gardens are filled with non-native plants that can't sustain the local butterflies and other creatures.

"You're not giving them anything to eat," Leonard said. "It's like having a restaurant without anything to eat."

Leonard noted that every property, residential or commercial, has a roof or paved space where runoff can occur. Each time a family plants a rain garden, runoff and pollution into the Chesapeake Bay watershed is reduced. Encouraging home gardeners to make rain gardens is a part of a larger effort, he said.

"We're going to fix it by getting people to understand the problem," he said. "Let's fix the problem piece by piece."

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Public invited to rain garden workshop at Towson Unitarian