All this talk of rain gardens sounds great, but how do we pull together such a concept? Rain gardens do not just pop out of the ground. Building this project requires a lot of planning from several groups of people.  The Urban East Institute kicked the whole idea off.  A part of the Institute is Professor John Tiedemann, who was instrumental in the project. His interns have been working on the details of the project. They worked out the logistics of the garden, as well as deciding where the garden will be placed.  In addition, the Institute got the flowers donated to us from various sources, and they sorted out where to place the plants based on each plants’ growth factors.  Such planning amounts to a large amount of time. Planning for the garden started back in January, and has been building up since. The Institute has created a plan and time frame that is as flexible as it is strong. We have been able to follow the pan effectively as to be on time with everything, but should a problem arise then the plan allows for extra time. This type of planning is useful in a project that can speed up or slow down at anytime.

                So where does Water Watch come in? We are involved in getting the news out to the community, getting people involved, offering tours, and actually building the garden itself. We have been working together to get the news out to local newspapers, including Atlanticville, to have them publish articles about the garden for the surrounding towns to read. Also, we have gone to various schools and set up programs to educate students about the poor water quality in our state. We also are preparing to offer tours to our own and surrounding neighborhoods to show people how easy it is to help the environment.

The biggest anticipation, however, is waiting until we can actually build the garden.  We will most likely build it within the next two weeks. We are currently working with facilities management to ensure that the garden does not violate any state laws and can be built safely and properly. This is important, because the state may limit where the garden should be built. Also, there could be sewer or electric lines that are near your digging site and hitting them while digging could endanger not only our safety but they safety of others.

                Planning is the most important part of this project, and creating a strong and flexible plan has allowed us to be prepared to build at just the right time.