Well, as usual, something very cool and unusual is happening in the courtyard of Siler City's Courtyard Cafe and the NC Arts Incubator (ground zero of cool in Siler City, so far as I know!).
What's going down? A RAIN GARDEN, that's what!
Mitch Woodward from NC State Cooperative Extension is working with Andrew Wright to install a really impressive catchment and dispersal system, to help water the various trees and shrubs that beautify that courtyard space so nicely.
It was only five or six years ago, when that courtyard, as I remember it, was a baking sheet of a parking lot, bright in the hot sun! Now is a vibrant and lush oasis, and soon to be 'much lusher'.
As Mitch explains, the plants were struggling (and Joan to feed them), because they had been planted, along with the dirt they were growing in, ON TOP of the concrete. This made for some tough feeding.
But when I arrived on the scene, Mr Write (on his front end loader) was nudging open deep, cool troughs in the earth, and I could see those trees are going to LOVE it!
It was fun to watch Write at work, he had a noticably delicate touch with such a large piece of machinery. Building rain gardens and putting sway back into streams is Wright's business, and he seemed very attuned to what he was doing. As he put it, an artist with "a different kind of paint brush"!
The drainage channels they had cut in the concrete I was especially impressed with.
These will lead the water from the roof's downspouts straight over to the garden beds, where it will bubble it, and soak them nice and cool and soggy in the summer.
The fella's got held up by the rain (and all of my annoying questions) but they'll be back at it tomorrow, and I hope to drop by too!
Maybe next they can help us work on the little stream out back. Indeed, thanks to Ann Bass, it is on their radar....!
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| Our darling, in the back 1.4-ty |
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| This wild Louisiana Iris is about to explode! |
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