I recently worked with Hui O Ko'olaupoko with making a rain garden. A rain garden is supposed to harness the rain water caught by the roof a building. A tube, usually PVC or ABS, runs from the rain gutter into a good sized depression in the ground like that of a pond where water can run and collect inside of off the roof. Inside of the hole there would be plants of various types of Native Hawaiian plants that would flourish when the rains filled the garden as well as survive during times where rain was very minimal. We had to grade the ground and scale the garden to the size of the roof so the correct volume of water would be accounted for. By doing something like this for the school we would be able to not only educate in having a Native Hawaiian plant garden, but also by taking advantage of our own climate here in Hawaii to beautify our campus and to utilize water instead of wasting it and letting the run-off pollute streams. During the project they took account of the position of the plants, their lifestyle, the pollution of the water from the roof, as well as erosion and flooding. By doing this we could encourage Kamehameha Schools to have a more sustainable campus and maybe even using this technique to make other rain gardens around the campus or the state. We could also teach about conserving water instead of letting things like sprinklers come on when it's raining happen. It would be a fun and yet challenging project that we could install on our campus anywhere with a roof and some grass.
Very cool idea. Need to jump through many hoops to get this done, but if this is the direction that you are going, it has some potential. I am very interested to see where it goes.
Very cool idea. Need to jump through many hoops to get this done, but if this is the direction that you are going, it has some potential. I am very interested to see where it goes.
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