The second of my ongoing service projects is helping out with the Rain Garden through Water Watch.  The Rain Garden by the Free to Be Center is used to collect water and prevent polluted runoff from leeching into other soil and water supplies.  The plants in the rain garden suck up the water in the garden, so that way it cannot collect pollution and carry it elsewhere.  This Rain Garden is in a low ditch area, so it can better collect the water.

Several trips have been made in order to weed the Rain Garden of weeds, tall grasses, etc. The first trip was merely to survey the garden and see what needed to be done.  The second trip was to weed, the third trip was to weed, and the fourth trip was to finish weeding.  However, on the fourth trip, the trip to weed became a mini Campus Clean Up as well.  We had a bag filled with garden gloves, and we used it to pick up things we found.  The most notable were many beer cans, chicken wire, a pot, a post, a white pipe, and several other things.  It was definitely  interesting.  Then when we finally made it to the Rain Garden, we got some of the biggest weeds ever out of the garden.

Taking some nice big weeds from the rain garden

Of course, there were some very large plots of crab grass as well, and with Megan Cohalan’s help, we were able to dig them out.

The biggest weed yet....

So now you can see that we really did some hard work.  Now all that needs to be done is some planting of colorful annuals, watering, and care taking.  Won’t you join us?