Rain Garden Designs

Rain gardens are excellent infrastructures to help capture excess stormwater and improve water quality. They are also aesthetically pleasing. Interested in installing one, but do not know where to begin?  The City of Maplewood, MN has a great website about starting rain gardens and even have some designs for those who are artistically challenged. Click here for more info.

The following are a few designs. Plants are hardy to Zone 4 (perfect for Superior). Designs are meant for small (8’x16’ to 12’x24) gardens, perfect for the city lot.

Butterflies and Friends

Prairie Garden

Plants for Indoor Air Quality!

We spend 90% of our time indoors. According to the EPA, indoor pollutants may be 2 to 5 times higher than outdoor levels. Many traditional cleaning products, paints, building materials, and office equipment such as printers and markers emit fumes that may have adverse health effects. We previously blogged about "freeing" your home of harmful toxins. Another great way to reduce toxins is by adding plants into your home.

In the late 1980s, NASA conducted a study of how houseplants could improve indoor air quality. Many newer homes are designed for energy efficiency, thus are often tightly sealed. This reduces energy loss, but also traps toxic chemicals in the air. Here is how houseplants can come to the rescue. Many houseplants come from tropical environments with thick canopies and limited light levels. Thus these plants evolved to become very efficient at capturing light and processing gases.

Here are some varieties that are best at filtering:
English ivy
Spider plant
Peace lily
Pothos                                                                
Snake plant (Mother-in-law tongue)
Philodendron
Dracaena
Ficus

These plants not only produce oxygen and water vapor, but they absorb carbon dioxide, benzene, formaldehyde, and/or trichloroethylene (chemicals commonly found in building materials and cleaning supplies).

On a side note . . . has your home ever been tested for radon? Radon is an odorles, tastelss, invisible gas produced by the decay of naturally occurring uranium in the soil and water. Radon moves from the ground into homes where it is then trapped.  It is the second leading cause of lung caner and the EPA recommend that all homes be tested (radon disclosure required for MN home sellers). Test kits can be found at hardware stores.

Save water and money with a rain barrel!

Spring and summer are great.  Sunshine, warm temperatures, blooming gardens....all things that we like to see.  However, those bulbs you plant need water to make your yard the talk of the town.  With all the other expenses of summer like high gas costs and vacations, doesn't it make sense to save a little money wherever you can? 

Instead of watering your garden from the hose off your home, purchase a rain barrel from our Rain Barrel and Compost Bin Sale.  Rain barrels capture water that runs off your roof and into your gutters and store it to be used at a later time.  When it's time to water, hook a hose to your barrel or fill a watering can from the spigot.  If the summer is dry, like much of Wisconsin experienced last summer, you can keep your plants perky with your stored water that came to you free from the sky.  Rain barrels also help keep local water bodies clean by diverting water that would typically go into the storm drain and out to the lake.       

We're also selling compost bins and accessories, including a compost turner and a kitchen scrap collector.  Composting keeps food waste out of landfills and improves soil by adding organic matter back into the soil. 

So....fill out an order form HERE or check out our website HERE. We will accept orders until May 24th, 2013 and have your items available for you on June 11th from 12:30-7:00 PM at Wessman Arena. 

The sale is sponsored by the City of Superior Environmental Services Division and UW Superior.

-Written by Jillian Schubert Edwards