Urban agriculture is gaining popularity across Texas, largely in the form of community gardens. These gardens provide several benefits to urban areas, such as producing fresh fruits and vegetables, beautification, and building community through gardening activities. For all their positive benefits, if community gardens are not managed correctly, they may have a negative impact on water quality through the use of excessive fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and excessive irrigation and tilling practices. This project aims to inform and mitigate these potential environmental impacts through best management practices (BMPs) such as raingardens to improve water quality and reduce erosion from stormwater runoff.
What is a Rain Garden?
A rain garden is a vegetated depression designed to capture and infiltrate stormwater runoff. Rain garden plants aid in the filtering of pollutants, making them an excellent best management practice strategy, all while adding beauty, habitat, and seasonal interest to landscape.
Project Purpose:
This project will evaluate water quality from three community gardens and the effectiveness of a raingarden as a best management practice for improving water quality. The data will be used to inform other community gardens on BMP’s for improving water quality.
Survey for the TWRI Community Garden BMPs project:
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