Before: Unused grass and dirt.

Adding rain gardens to a home landscape can be a low-cost way for urban and suburban dwellers to participate in improving stream health. However, rain gardens in residential areas are rare, and the term "rain garden" is not yet generally understood. To build awareness of rain gardens and Napa County's rain garden rebate program, the RCD is partnering with Napa County and City of Napa Water Division to develop a demonstration rain garden on Vintage High School's campus. The 13,000 ft2 garden sits between a large parking lot, a community pool, and Salvador Creek. The site receives heavy foot traffic from students, and previously was a weedy flat plot with little habitat value.

After: A beautiful functional space.

 

The rain garden's design was developed in a workshop hosted by County and Bay-friendly Coalition and shares principles of low-impact gardening, including water catchment, drought-tolerance, lawn alternatives, habitat creation, waste reduction, and soil health. The City of Napa Water Division will showcase water-wise landscaping techniques, including smart controllers, in the garden. The California Native Plant Society is helping ensure garden features natives that perform well in yards AND can be found in open spaces in the County.

 

So far, the garden has graded to sink stormwater and the low areas have been planted with water tolerant plants, such as sedges and juncus. VHS students and Napa Valley Can Do volunteers have volunteered weed pulling and sheet mulching efforts to get the garden ready for upland plantings this winter. We are also planning to install signs in the garden to convey environmentally beneficial features as well as cultural uses of native plants.

 

We expect that the garden will be a hub of watershed-friendly landscaping education and serve as an outdoor classroom for ecological studies.

  

Great Start For the High School LandSmart Program!

Stephanie Turnipseed, Education Coordinator  

  

As you prepare your home, garden, and farm for the next rain storm, are roads on your list of items to batten down and protect? If you are interested in protecting water quality and the longevity of your roads, we encourage you to go through the checklist below with your roads.

 

In some watersheds, road-related erosion can explain up to half of all human-caused sediment in the waterways. The consequence of road-related sediment entering creeks is that fish habitat is degraded and your roads require repair.

 

Roads are storm-proof when road surface drainage is frequently dispersed, stream crossings are protected from failure, and unstable fills or cutbanks are prevented from eroding into streams. As a general rule, all bare soils that may erode into streams should be seeded and straw mulched before any rain events.

Place a trash rack at the inlet of a culvert to prevent debris from blocking the entrance.

 

 

 

Road Storm-proofing Check List

  

Road surface drainage

o             Year-round use roads are either paved or rocked such that the native surface is not visible and raindrop impact is absorbed by the applied surface.

o             Unsurfaced roads are either closed during rainy periods of the year or are not used when the road surface is wet.

o             All road surface drainage is disconnected from streams by a variety of strategies such as berm removal, road surface shaping (outsloping, insloping, or crowning), rolling dips, ditch relief culverts, and /or waterbars.

o             Drainage from ditches and cutbanks is disconnected from streams by rolling dips and/or ditch relief culverts.

o             Outflow from rolling dips and ditch relief culverts does not discharge to streams or onto active (or potentially active) landslides.

o             As much as possible, water is prevented from entering gullies (including those below ditch relief culverts).

 

 

Stream crossings

o             Culvert inlet, outlet, and bottom are open and in sound condition.

o             Stream crossings have no diversion potential (functional critical dips are in place).

o             Stream crossing inlets have low plug potential (trash barriers installed).

o             Stream crossing outlets are protected from erosion (extended beyond the base of fill and/or outflow is dissipated with rock armor).