RTC TrailBlog : gardens

Urban Pathways to Water Quality and Flood Protection

Steve Schweigerdt (RTC) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 16:48:00 GMT

The Richmond Greenway in the San Francsico Bay Area is demonstrating how urban pathways can be multi-purpose--critical not only for transportation, but also as a place to treat storm runoff, prevent flooding of nearby properties, enhance habitat and provide green space. In addition to the community gardens Urban Tilth is building, The Watershed Project is constructing the Richmond Greenway Bioswale Project, located between 6th Street and 8th Street along the three-mile greenway. The bioswale was designed to serve as a demonstration project, showing how Low Impact Development (LID) management practices can be used to capture and treat stormwater using natural landscaping to model nature.

According to Matt Freiberg, the project manager:

"The bioswale is designed to capture and filter stormwater from the immediate neighborhood, reducing the impacts of urban runoff from the area. We amended the site's soil by replacing the dense clay soil with more pervious sandy soil to increase the lands capacity to absorb water. We also designed the channel to meander like a real river would. This provides a natural aesthetic that enhances the beauty of the site and slows water during large flow events, increasing the residence time of the water, allowing for greater filtration and infiltration of the water. Lastly, we incorporated native plants that attract beneficial insect and bird species as well as break up the soil allowing water to drain deeper into the soil. The overall design maximizes infiltration to keep water on site in the soil rather than flooding the site, and allows the soil bacteria opportunity to literally eat the organic pollutants that would normally run off into the bay."

The project will include posting a number of interpretive signs, providing an opportunity for the public to learn about native plants, how a bioswale works and the site's history. The bioswale engages the community as the Watershed Project hosts monthly workdays where people can help continue to plant new native vegetation, weed invasive species, beautify the site and learn about the impact of this project and how similar projects can be replicated throughout the community. "We also want to engage the community so they feel a sense of ownership of the site and are motivated to become stewards of their community environment for years to come," says Freiberg.

Photo: Volunteers plant native plants on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, courtesy The Watershed Project

Volunteers Create Teaching Garden Along D.C. Rail-Trail

Stephen Miller (RTC) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 19:29:00 GMT

On Saturday, the District of Columbia Building Industry Association hosted its 18th annual Community Improvement Day on the Metropolitan Branch Trail. More than 450 volunteers pitched in to help create a landscaped area along the trail through the Edgewood neighborhood. The new community amenities include a teaching garden, soft surface walking path, edible plants and a sitting area. WTTG-TV was there to document the day's events; you can view the video embedded above.

California Teens Turning the Richmond Greenway Green

Steve Schweigerdt (RTC) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:36:00 GMT

This summer, the teens working with Urban Tilth in Richmond, Calif., made great progress in expanding the community gardens along the Richmond Greenway with new raised bed gardens, a fruit tree orchard, a grape trellis and work on Berryland. The gardens finish off the summer as a lush oasis along the trail, with the well-tended beds kept weed-free and watered by the hard work of the youth and community stewards. The Watershed Project’s native plant gardens are also expanding with additional areas cleared of weeds and planted with natives that attract birds, butterflies and bees. Rails-to-Trails Conservancy was able to join in the celebration of the summer’s accomplishments at the August Second Saturday work party, where we gave out helmets for safety and locks and lights supplied by Mike’s Bikes of Berkeley.

If you missed last week's webinar on gardening along rail-trails, you can still watch the recorded version and take a look at our new garden resource center.

Photo by Steve Schweigerdt/Rails-to-Trails Conservancy

Watch our Webinar: The Secrets to Gardens on Urban Pathways

Stephen Miller (RTC) — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 03:49:00 GMT

Last week, RTC hosted The Secrets to Gardens on Urban Pathways, a webinar that offered tips and advice on how to start and maintain community gardens along trails in urban areas. Presenter Jesse Kurtz-Nicholl of Johns Hopkins University's Center for a Livable Future was joined by Urban Tilth executive director Doria Robinson and Park Guthrie of Wildcat Farms. With trail garden experience in Richmond, Calif., and Washington, D.C., the panel offered their expertise and took questions from the audience. The webinar, embedded above, is available for replay. We also have a trail garden page in our Trail Building Toolbox available for use.

Join Our Webinar: The Secrets to Gardens on Urban Pathways

Stephen Miller (RTC) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 15:10:00 GMT

The Secrets to Gardens on Urban Pathways
Hosted by RTC's Urban Pathways Initiative
Thursday, August 26, 2010 - 2 p.m. EST

Gardens along trails are great community resources that can not only build a connection to local food and natural systems, but also improve community interaction, break down generational barriers and add a sense of livability to urban areas. Maintaining a community or school garden along a trail requires space, money, expertise, dedication and relationships. Jesse Kurtz-Nicholl of Johns Hopkins University Center for a Livable Future, Urban Tilth executive director Doria Robinson and Park Guthrie of Wildcat Farms have led projects along rail-trails in Richmond, Calif., and Washington, D.C. They will present and take questions on how to foster, start and maintain community gardens along trails in urban areas.

Read biographies of webinar presenters .

Photo by M.V. Jantzen/Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.

Cleveland Walk+Roll Event Features Morgana Run Trail

Eric Oberg (RTC) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 13:16:00 GMT

A beautiful, sunny July 25 made a wonderful backdrop for the Walk+Roll event in Cleveland's Slavic Village neighborhood. The Sunday event brought hundreds of people, young and old, to enjoy numerous events throughout the community. Walk+Roll sponsored the event in conjunction with Slavic Village Development. The celebration included the closing of 1.8 miles of neighborhood streets to motor traffic, creating a festive atmosphere as cyclists and walkers took over the streets and the connecting Morgana Run Trail.

Beginning at Cleveland Metroparks Washington Reservation, which hosted live music, soccer and golf stations, the 2.6-mile loop ran through Slavic Village. Along the route participants enjoyed cuisine from local restaurants, tours of the extensive community gardens, multiple live music sites, a carnival area for families including free root beer floats, skateboarding demonstrations and baseball games played by America's longest-running little league organization.

Another highlight of the day was the official dedication of Rotoflora, the newly installed public art piece at the 49th Street trailhead. The concentration of people and smiles back at Washington Reservation late in the afternoon confirmed the overwhelming success of the event.

Photo by Eric Oberg/Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.

A School Garden Begins to Bloom Along D.C. Rail-Trail

Stephen Miller (RTC) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:26:00 GMT

By Jesse Kurtz-Nicholl

As part of the Meet the Met grand-opening celebration on Saturday, June 5, DC Prep Academy Charter School and Rails-to-Trails Conservancy teamed up to add another school garden into the growing rolls of urban agriculture taking place around the country. The 1,000-square-foot garden, set in Northeast D.C.’s Edgewood community, will combine an edible forest of fruit trees, perennial vegetables, herbs, insectary plants and dynamic accumulators with a large space for growing annual crops like collards, corn, squash, tomatoes and more.

The advantage of this garden site is that it is located along the brand-new Metropolitan Branch Trail coming out of Union Station, which provides previously cut-off communities accessibility to the metro and to Union Station and the Capitol. The garden will not only beautify the new trail, it will hopefully connect the charter school to the community in a new way. DC Prep is housed in old industrial buildings that had used the nearby railroad, and even now their middle school campus has no playground to speak of. A true “urban” campus, DC Prep students are absolutely the students that most need to be reconnected to the growing of food and how it affects our lives

Plans are being made for how the garden will be used, but classes and teachers are already lining up to use the garden in their curriculum. Hopefully, the site will be used not only to educate students in genuine food production, but bring a small and steady stream of locally grown produce into the homes of the students and teachers at the school. DC Prep already is at the forefront of school food, using Revolution Foods as their sourcing agent, and we hope next year to collaborate with Revolution Foods in cooking demonstrations using food from the garden.

Crossposted at Center for a Livable Future. Photo by M.V. Jantzen/Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.