Volunteers stuck out the rain and mud to help nearby wildlife thrive in North Vancouver.
The North Shore Streamkeepers and the North Shore Alliance Church worked together early November to build a rain garden in the church’s parking lot —- with the purpose to filter stormwater and capture toxic contaminants shed by vehicles before reaching Wagg Creek.
“We’re really pleased with how it’s performing and how it transformed that particular section of the parking lot into something that looks pleasant,” said Carolynne Robertson, vice-president of the North Shore Streamkeepers.
What used to be a row of concrete lock blocks is now a 21 metres long rain garden that mimics natural bends of a river and features 150 plants – both native and ornamental. The plants were selected for their tolerance of drought and wet conditions, seasonal colour and support birds and pollinators in the spring, Robertson said.
Rain gardens can also clean up to 80 per cent of pollutants from road runoff, Robertson said.
“When it rains and there’s a big rush of water that drains into our urban streams, it causes damage just from the combined force of the water can erode stream banks and dislodge gravel and harm aquatic life,” she said.
North Shore Streamkeepers is a volunteer organization that focuses on monitoring and improving streams and waterways for two decades, and got involved with the project to demonstrate that citizens can take action that has impact, Robertson said.
After Robertson heard concerns from the church last year about car-generated pollutants in their parking lot, she suggested building a rain garden.
When an opportunity came up to apply for the City of North Vancouver’s Living City Grant, the church applied to see what would come of it.
Then the North Shore Alliance Church’s environmental club spearheaded the project, and the two organizations spent 20 months of planning to make the garden a reality.
The Nature Trust British Columbia and the Pacific Salmon Foundation also helped fund the project, and the North Shore Rain Garden Project through Simon Fraser University provided the design.
Brenda Martin, executive administrator of the church, helped lift the project off the ground and was one of the volunteers planting last month.
“We’ve taken so much away from our environment that it’s lovely to be able to do what we can to clean things up before we put it back out into the streams and the ocean,” Martin said. “It’s great that we can be a part of this and be part of the solution.”
Martin met with the city and talked with different organizations on how to go about the rain garden. In parking lots, there are lots of chemicals that come off of tires that can end up in water, Martin said.
The church parking lot drains into Wagg Creek, known to suffer from poor water quality due to urbanization, Robertson said.
Only a month after the rain garden has been installed Martin has already seen it working, making the area cleaner.
After seeing success with the rain garden, Martin hopes to add one or two more in the parking lot to help catch more water to help Wagg Creek.
“It feels like a small drop in a really big bucket. But I think if we can have lots of little drops, we can make a difference,” Martin said. “It’s just lovely to see the community come together in many different ways.”
Abby Luciano is the Indigenous and civic affairs reporter for the North Shore News. This reporting beat is made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative. [email protected]
