Great news—the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District’s initiative “Project Clear” offers small grants to help improve water quality through rainscaping! As MSD announces on their website, they “will invest billions of dollars over a generation in planning, designing, and building community rainscaping projects, system improvements, and an ambitious program of maintenance and repair.”
Residents of participating St. Louis County municipalities can now apply for a rainscape rebate to establish a rain garden, amend the soil, or install permeable pavement, rain barrels, or even a green roof on their property. Find out if your property is included in the grant program focus area.
Quiet Village Landscaping can design a rain garden that adds beauty to your landscape while improving your property value. A rain garden is a great solution for existing drainage problem areas in your yard that hold water for hours—or even days—after a downpour. If your lawn has sections where turf refuses to grow and always looks patchy and weak, a rain garden may be just what you need.
By creating a shallow depression planted with a variety of attractive native plants, rain water can be held and properly absorbed by the soil to replenish groundwater supplies. This prevents rainwater from streaming off of your property to pollute and flood neighboring creeks and waterways, and it also provides food and refuge for native wildlife like butterflies and birds.