rain gardens

A Firsthand Rain Garden

Stormwater is one of the largest polluters of surface water in our area. When rain falls to the ground and lands on impervious surfaces (such as roads, rooves, driveways, and more), the water collects all of the pollutants on this impervious cover and dumps them in concentrated amounts wherever the stormwater drains to. Often, the […]

NEMO’s New Rain Garden App Getting the Attention it Deserves

It should come as no surprise how excited we are to show off NEMO’s new Rain Garden App (see past blog posts), not to mention the fact that it’s the first UConn app created for the general public. However, we are equally excited about all the attention it is getting. Most recently, NEMO Director Michael […]

New Rain Garden "How To" Website for Homeowners

CLEAR’s NEMO program recently partnered with the Connecticut Fund for the Environment‘s Save the Sound program to create a rain garden “how to” website, focused on helping Connecticut and New England homeowners build their own rain garden. The Rain Gardens website is meant to be a companion site to both the CT NEMO website and Save […]

NEMO Monitoring Project Looks at Nitrogen Processing by Bioretention

Last week CLEAR’s NEMO Program broke ground on a new monitoring project focused on the Low Impact Development (LID) practice of bioretention.  Bioretention is the practice of reducing the quantity, and increasing the quality, of runoff by directing it to a depression filled with plants.  This is the same concept as the more widely recognized rain garden, […]

Rain Garden App Coming Soon!

Several CLEAR programs (o.k., since you asked, it’s the CT NEMO, National NEMO Network, and the Geospatial Training Programs) have teamed up to develop a “rain garden” app for smart phones.  A rain garden is a vegetated depression that accepts and infiltrates runoff from a rooftop, driveway of other impervious surface.  Unlike many  “Low Impact […]

NEMO’s Rain Garden Demonstration Site

The NEMO team has just completed its second rain garden demonstration site at the Middlesex County Extension Center in Haddam (CLEAR and NEMO’s home-base). Rain gardens are shallow depressions in the landscape that typically include plants and a mulch layer or ground cover. Their purpose is to help retain water runoff during a storm event, allowing […]

CLEAR Faculty Receive EPA Award

CT NEMO’s Michael Dietz and Chet Arnold have been given the Environmental Merit Award through EPA Region 1, for their work on New England Rain Garden Trainings. To date, they have presented trainings in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. EPA’s Environmental Merit Award is an annual award that recognizes outstanding environmental advocates who have made significant […]

Residential Rain Garden Training

Rain gardens are shallow depressions in the landscape that typically include plants and a mulch layer or ground cover. In addition to providing increased groundwater recharge, they are expected to provide pollutant treatment. Pollutant treatment in rain gardens has been attributed to adsorption, decomposition, ion exchange and volatilization. The CT NEMO Program is teaching a 1.5 […]

Rain Gardens

April 19, 2011 Presented by Michael Dietz, UConn CLEAR A rain garden is a depressed area in the landscape designed to collect and infiltrate stormwater. In addition to treating stormwater, rain gardens can be beautiful additions to the home landscape. This webinar will provide an overview of the functions and features of rain gardens. Learn […]