SMLC LeFurge Woods - Rain Gardens
2021 WCCD School & Community Habitat Grant Awardee Report
The Southeast Michigan Land Conservancy has a long history of land conservation, including acquiring and protecting LeFurge Woods Nature Preserve along the Superior Greenway project in Superior Township. The previous Stewardship and Outreach Manager, Julie McLaughlin, applied for the WCCD School & Community Habitat Grant in 2021, with the purpose install rain gardens to address standing rain water issues and provide an aesthetically pleasing and educational opportunity upon entering the preserve.
As you'll read below, this was a multiple year on-going effort, and included many partner organizations and volunteer group efforts, resulting in transforming a problematic parking lot surrounded by monocultures of invasive grasses into diverse, functional, and educational rain gardens. We highly recommend visiting LeFurge Woods to check out the newly installed gardens and the nature preserve trails!
WCCD School & Community Habitat Grant - Final Project Report:
by Julie McLaughlin, Stewardship and Outreach Manager
August 2022
Our primary goal was twofold: to enhance the habitat at the main entrance to our most popular nature preserve, LeFurge Woods, and to deal with parking lot runoff issues. The installation of a rain garden was chosen as a solution to demonstrate to our visitors how rain garden plants can be used in formal and more natural settings. Finally, we used this project as an opportunity to engage with local volunteers, such as a Master Gardener, Stewardship Interns, members of the public, volunteers from the MSU Extension’s Conservation Stewards Program.
Planning and Site Prep
SMLC initially consulted with Washtenaw County Water Resources Division in 2019 and Stewardship staff went through the Master Rain Gardener training in 2020-2021. We installed our first rain garden in 2021 with a grant from the National Environmental Education Foundation and volunteer support (design and installation) from a Master Gardener. The grant allowed us to prepare the site via parking lot gravel and grading and the installation of a grate, drain pipe, and pop-up drain to direct parking lot runoff into our initial rain garden, and also provided the plants for the first installation. Volunteers and stewardship staff and interns provided the labor which entailed removing invasive species and lots of digging!
Expansion Prep and Installation
Based on lessons learned through our initial rain garden, we decided to make some changes to the design and to expand the footprint of the runoff area due to the large amount of runoff from the parking lot. Because the expanded area contained a mixture of native and invasive shrubs, we went with a more naturalized design that involved removing buckthorn, reed canary grass, and purple loosestrife, and planting rain garden plants in those areas in order to shade out regrowth and compete with invasives. We left intact the native dogwoods where feasible. This was accomplished through a Winter 2021 workday with many volunteers; a design plan and site visits with two volunteers from the MSU Extension’s Conservation Stewards Program as part of their Capstone Project; and the June 2022 installation of plants provided by Washtenaw County Conservation District by volunteers.
Before: A single-species patch of invasive reed canary grass
Volunteers installing the rain garden plants
Invasive reed canary grass removed
Volunteers installing the rain garden plants
Challenges
Our initial rain garden provided some important lessons that we used in the planning and installation of the expanded rain garden. Several of the species in our initial rain garden did not survive the first season, and left a significant bare area -for the second garden we kept as much native vegetation intact to avoid this issue, and selectively planted the new plants in several areas adjacent to the initial rain garden. We originally had planned for a more formal garden, but the amount of physical labor involved and the time it would take to establish plants from a blank slate led us to a different strategy: removing invasives and strategically installing rain garden plants around the existing species, creating a more naturalized garden. We also initially planned to use mulch but after we saw how quickly it washed away after a heavy rain we decided not to.
We had a low volunteer turnout for the official planting day, which meant it took longer to get the plants in the ground and not as much care could be given to each individual plant. Finally there is no water source at the site, so water had to be brought to the site with a water tank and hose after the planting to ensure the plants would survive their first couple of weeks.
Next Steps
An ongoing challenge will be to deal with the re-sprouts of invasive species, which will require Stewardship staff to do spot herbicide treatments throughout the following years, and to plant these areas (ideally using divisions once the smaller plants get well established). Routine maintenance includes clearing of sediment from the runoff pipe and drain, as well as the overflow channels of the rain garden. A sign will be installed highlighting WCCD’s contribution to this project. Depending on the success of the planting, SMLC may need to install additional plants.