Students design and construct campus rain garden

Post date: Oct 21, 2016 2:7:28 PM

Members of the Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences teamed up with Siena’s Facilities Department on a home run project for the College community. After noticing that the Siena baseball field can flood during large rain storms when storm water runoff from hard surfaces on campus flows onto the outfield, Environmental Studies and Sciences students and faculty and the Facilities Department came together to design and build a rain garden. A rain garden is a planted depression that captures rainfall runoff and allows it to slowly soak into the ground rather than flowing into a stream channel, or in this case, a baseball field. This new rain garden not only will reduce flooding, but also improve water quality and provide habitat for butterflies and other wildlife. Siena students Carl Greenman ’17, Rob Ewing ’17, and Nick McCloskey ’17 analyzed the site during rain storms, calculated the appropriate size for the garden to capture runoff, determined the most effective layout, computed the water quality benefits, and chose plants for the garden. The students worked alongside Siena’s Facilities Department to construct the rain garden this spring with the help of volunteers from the Environmental Club. Sergio Sericolo, MFA, art director, helped design an informational sign for the rain garden and the School of Science provided the rain garden plants.

The rain garden project is features on the Siena College webpage and on the Times Union Community blog.

On August 4th, rain garden team member, Carl, gave a presentation on the rain garden project for the Men's Garden Club of Albany.