Shady Side Rural Heritage Society's Grand Opening for Rain Gardens and Heritage Eco Tour

Sunday, June 13^th marked the Shady Side Rural Heritage Society’s Grand Opening for the installation of three rain gardens and four rain barrels, installed in May on the Captain Salem Avery Museum grounds—and they are indeed grand and a central permanent part of the new educational Heritage Eco Tour! Visitors will be able to see how to become good stewards of the rivers and Chesapeake Bay by following the Heritage Eco Tour around the Museum grounds.

Having had flooding problems for years, the 2009 rains and neighborhood flooding began a Board of Trustees initiative to address the problem and to become a protector of the Chesapeake Bay. If you've been to the Museum after a hard rain (or after two feet of snow!), you have certainly seen the "pond" where the grassy area and the walkway from the parking lot used to be! This caused not only an aesthetic problem, and an access problem, but an unfiltered, unfettered run-off problem as well.

The Chesapeake Bay Trust awarded the Shady Side Rural Heritage Society a grant to construct a storm water management plan, intended to also become a model water filtration project for the community and all of the thousands of visitors the Museum hosts annually. Rain barrels, bio-retention cells, native plants, a Wye Oak and vegetable garden will demonstrate careful living on the Bay. The goal of this project is to divert as much water as possible away from the Bay and into the gardens where new plants will thrive. Remaining water that does reach the West River will be cleaner as a result of the natural process of filtering through the soil levels. Gail Schneider, Chair of the Going Green Committee, has provided the leadership for this project.

Visitors will receive a brochure for the self-guided Heritage Eco Tour, funded by a grant from Four Rivers Heritage Area. Plant identifying tags and plants for the vegetable garden are being funded by a grant from Unity Gardens.

Professionals that designed the new additions are Anne Guillette, Low Impact Design Studio, and Mel Wilkins, EcoGardens.

Doug Sanner, Eden Contracting, supervised the creation of the rain gardens.

Greenstreet Gardens donated all of the 500 plus plants for the rain gardens.

Rainbarrels were painted by Muddy Creek Artist Guild artists.

For more information, visit: ShadySideMuseum.org.