There’s now a rain garden at Beavermead Campground’s new gatehouse, thanks to Otonabee Conservation and students in the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board’s Youth Leadership in Sustainability Program.
Installed on Wednesday (October 12), the rain garden includes over 100 native trees, shrubs, grasses, and flowers, including native species of purple coneflower, big bluestem, red osier dogwood, and black-eyed Susan which will provide habitat for pollinators. They are also drought tolerant and will therefore require minimal maintenance and watering.
Otonabee Conservation owns and operates Beavermead Campground, located at 2011 Ashburnham Drive, which provides camping services from May to October.
“This project will create a welcoming entrance to Beavermead Campground and highlight best practices for habitat enhancement and water conservation,” says Otonabee Conservation CAO and secretary-treasurer Janette Loveys Smith in a media release. “Working together with City of Peterborough and our community partners demonstrates our collective commitment to climate change adaptation and watershed health.”
With support from local community partners at GreenUP, the rain garden was designed to capture runoff from the roof of the new gatehouse. Rain will then be temporarily stored in the garden during a storm event and will slowly drain away reducing flooding, filtering pollutants, and channelling runoff into the ground.
The demonstration rain garden will provide opportunities for visitors to the park and campground “to see how beautiful native species are” and to learn more about the benefits of water conservation, according to the media release.
“In the face of the climate and biodiversity crisis, it’s so important that students have opportunities for hands-on activities like this where they are engaged in constructive, restorative, solutions-based work and can connect this positive experience with classroom learning,” says Cam Douglas, teacher and Youth Leadership in Sustainability Program coordinator.
