While winter isn’t necessarily the time for landscaping, tools from the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay can help residents prepare for spring.
For a number of years, the Alliance offered a “Reduce Your Stormwater” program, a subsection of the RiverWise Communities initiative, that installed or designed gardens for residents that included plants native to the region in order to help reduce stormwater runoff.
“The program originated through an effort for us to engage homeowners in reducing pollution from rain events from private properties,” said Nissa Dean, Virginia State director for the Alliance. “There’s plenty of government organizations working at a large scale to reduce pollution, but what recognized is that if we engaged homeowners, there would be a huge impact.”
Christina Bonini, RiverWise program manager for the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, said there’s been “a lot of interest generated from the communities in which we worked.”
“Once we got a few projects installed and neighbors saw these beautiful gardens we created, it triggered people’s interest,” Bonini said.
In 2016, the program lost its funding but the organization is still looking for ways to prevent this issue.
Bonini said it’s a normal part of the cycle for nonprofits to sometimes lose funding for a program. But the organization is continually looking to find funding.
While Reduce Your Stormwater is currently on hold, the RiverWise Communities initiative is continuing.
RiverWise Communities is a program geared toward preventing pollution in the Chesapeake Bay in a few ways.
The first is by reaching out to various religious congregations because typically they have large parking lots that sit empty collecting storm water.
There is also the RiverWise Schools aspect of the initiative, which focuses on working with schools to integrate storm water runoff prevention practices into the curriculum.
Despite losing the funding for the residential program, those looking to take part in their own native garden installations still have options.
One way that locals, or homeowners across the country, can still take part in the program is through the Yard Design Tool from the Alliance. With the tool, participants create a profile, answer a series of questions and then are provided with a list of native plants that can be used in their own gardens.
Bonini said that while it might seem like a small effort to install gardens at individual homes, it can actually have a significant impact.
“Overall, anyone using practices like this on their property will have an overall benefit of improving water quality,” Bonini said. “Hampton Roads is downstream from Richmond, so [Richmond’s water system] is flowing into Hampton Roads waterways. Putting in these practices helps everyone.”
