Team Effort on Urban Rain Garden Leads to Award-Winning Result for Students, Volunteers, Designers
Olneyville, Providence, RI
Adults training for jobs in the new green economy created it, local landscape architects designed it, children living in the surrounding public housing cared for it, and green organizations from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Ecological Landscaping Association filmed, photographed, and wrote about it. In one of the most urban areas of Providence, a brightly flowering rain garden now has won a prestigious award from the Rhode Island chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (RIASLA).
The Manton Heights Rain Garden, designed by Gates, Leighton and Associates Landscape Architecture in East Providence, has won RIASLA’s Merit Award in Communications. The award was announced on Friday, December 9. Manton Heights is a public housing complex administered by the Providence Housing Authority, which welcomed and supported the project.
The Manton Heights Rain Garden, designed by GLA has won RIASLA’s Merit Award in Communications.
The Communications award is given to a project in which successful communication about a landscape technique, idea, or initiative is an important part of the project outcome. Rain gardens, which are storm-runoff-capturing, bowl-shaped gardens featuring attractive plants, are a key component of sustainable methods used by landscape architects today. The installation at Manton Heights halts storm water damage to a steep hill and parking lot, returns rain to the native aquifer, and promotes bird and butterfly habitat---even in the middle of the city.
Pretty as the garden is, the project’s most critical feature was the widespread communication network it inspired. “This award properly is shared with the organizations that created and disseminated compelling educational pieces about rain gardens as a result of the project,” said GLA’s president Don Leighton upon accepting the award. “They include the New England Office of the Environmental Protection Agency, which created an on-line video of the rain garden’s creation; the Ecological Landscaping Association, which features the project in its online newsletter; and ‘The Plant Pro’ on NBC Channel 10, which aired sections on the project. All this communication effectively spread the word about the benefits of rain gardens. The first call our office received afterwards was from an Eagle Scout who wanted to create a rain garden in his ocean side community.”
The design, materials, and labor to create the rain garden were all donated by local companies and organizations. The trainees who built the garden were from Groundwork Providence’s Sustainable Urban Landscaping Job Training Program, and the installation was part of a series conceived by the University of Rhode Island’s Outreach Center. The educational features about the garden are currently available on the websites of the above organizations, along with GLA’s plan and plant list for the garden.
