Posts Tagged ‘community’

Time for Summer Rain Garden Maintenance

Monday, 31 July, 2017 15:49 Written by Stewardship Partners
0 Comments

Summer is here, which means it’s time to water your rain garden! 

During the first two years of your rain garden’s life the plants are just getting established and will need water during dry periods. Once the roots have spread out and down (after two years) you won’t need to water them as much or at all.

If your rain garden is less than 2-3 years old, now is the time to start watering it!

RainWise has produced a video on “Watering Rain Gardens” that can help you learn how much to water your rain garden.

You can also refer to the Rain Garden Care Guide for helpful tips on watering and general plant care (Watering, page 10).

We have many great rain garden resources available in our Resource Library to answer your rain garden questions and help you maintain your hardworking garden!

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions!

Join our Rain Garden Assessment Team!

Monday, 31 July, 2017 14:11 Written by Stewardship Partners
0 Comments

We are currently looking for volunteers to help us develop and test a “Rapid Assessment Protocol” for rain gardens. We have over 100 volunteers signed up and working to test a more thorough Rain Garden Assessment Protocol, but the cities and towns around the region who are funding this work also want to see if we can create a quick and easy way to answer the simple question of whether or not a rain garden is functioning based on a limited number of observations and measurements. 

We’d love your involvement with this process! If you are in or near Thurston, Pierce, Snohomish or Jefferson counties, and you are available to spend a couple of hours going to a specific rain garden that our team will direct you to, spend 30-60 minutes recording what you observe and then submitting that information, please write us back to sign up. We will most likely team you up with at least one other volunteer and assign you to assess between 1 and 3 rain gardens in August or September.

Please let us know if you are interested by August 11th by emailing Emma Vowels at ev@stewardshippartners.org and please feel free to share this with others who you think may be interested.

 

Background:  Rain gardens are an important tool to address polluted runoff in local waterways and Puget Sound. Rain gardens keep this stormwater out of the streets; allow time for water to infiltrate into soils; and filter out pollutants through plants and the organisms and fungi in the soils.

 

What:  With funding from over 90 Western Washington cities and towns, a team of Puget Sound-based WSU Extension offices, Stewardship Partners, City of Puyallup and other regional advisors is developing a method to assess individual rain garden effectiveness. Volunteers will play a critical role in the success of creating this tool, which will be used by local and state governments, organizations, and businesses throughout the region once it’s completed.

Volunteer Commitment:

  • Team test the field-based methods on local rain garden sites during Aug/Sept 2017
  • Provide feedback so project leaders can improve the model before developing online training & final assessment protocols
  • No training needed to test the “Rapid Assessment Protocol” on local rain garden sites during Aug/Sept 2017

 

Why Volunteer?

  • Help fill a critical research gap in our region to result in more effective rain gardens in the future.
  • Gain skills and knowledge in evaluating soils, plants, hydrology, public perception & more.
  • Work in small teams (we’ll help connect you!) and learn from others in your group.
  • Build camaraderie with fellow volunteers from different backgrounds.
  • Be recognized in the final documents that will inform professionals concerned about stormwater throughout Western Washington, and which may be used to create a national model.
  • Eligible for Continuing Education/Special Credits and volunteer hours through your WSU Extension program.

 

A Word from Our Executive Director

Monday, 14 November, 2016 11:35 Written by Stewardship Partners
0 Comments

A common challenge for environmental non-profits is how to clearly describe their organization’s niche – how do we uniquely add value? Earlier this year, we spent a little time with Samantha Neukom and her team at Northbound, and now have a clear message about the who and the what behind Stewardship Partners.

Stewardship Partners creates people-based solutions for Puget Sound that engage all kinds of people to become caretakers of the land and water that surrounds and sustains us. When everybody understands their role, has access to simple tools and resources, and has a sense of belonging to their surrounding community, land and water, then lasting positive change happens.

We connect every part of the system from landowners to legislators to shopkeepers to nature lovers through a potent mix of empathy, optimism, intelligence and action. Committed to creative and collaborative solutions, Stewardship Partners innovates based on what engages people and makes a measurable impact. By doing this, we create communities that belong to the land and water.

-David J. Burger
Executive Director 

seattle

Teaching, Learning and Connecting around Stewardship

Thursday, 05 May, 2016 14:13 Written by Stewardship Partners
0 Comments

Our team has been out in the community teaching  kids about ways to fight polluted runoff.

kirb&em

Kirby and Emma at Children’s Water Festival

One thousand enthusiastic fifth-graders from the Tacoma area learned all their is to know about water quality and conservation by participating in this year’s Children’s Water Festival. The young minds loved the hands-on exhibits and had lots of great questions, as well as ideas for cleaning Puget Sound. Stewardship Partners’ 12,000 Rain Gardens Program participated by demonstrating how dirt can be used to clean water.

Join the Campaign!

Tuesday, 27 October, 2015 11:49 Written by Stewardship Partners
0 Comments

NewMapWe are thrilled to announce that we have launched a new campaign map and registry that will show where current projects are located and provide a simple tool to register new ones. With this new map you will be able to not only see where rain gardens are located but also use the map to check out where the most recent or most popular gardens are located in your community. One of the most exciting aspects of our new map is the streamlined registration process so that we can capture all the good work being done out there. It has never been easier to register and add your garden to the 12,000 Rain Gardens movement. We have included a comment feature so you can ask a questions or provide input about any rain garden. Anyone can quickly pull up the map and add a rain garden to the map, comment on the status of a project or request a garden in your community. This map is part of a big push to get all Puget Sound rain gardens registered to capture our goal of 12,000 rain gardens by the end of 2016. If you are a municipality or landscape contractor with a list of rain gardens waiting to be registered, please contact us!

In other news, we recently launched our newest grant program to assist with funding rain garden installations. We partnered with RainWise and King County to create the RainWise Access Grant, which provides up to $500 for RainWise eligible homeowners and $1,000 for larger non-profit owners in the Lower Duwamish Watershed. We developed this program to make rain gardens accessible to all who want one. Until now, there were no resources to cover the up-front costs of an installation – costs that eventually get rebated through the City of Seattle’s RainWise program. The new RainWise Access Grant bridges the gap between the rebate amount and the actual cost of the project, which could result in a free rain garden for those who cannot afford the up-front costs of a rain garden.

If you want to learn more about the RainWise Access Grant here or email the 12,000 Rain Gardens’ Project Manager, Aaron Clark at ac@stewardshippartners.org