Raingardens are an enlightened infrastructure solution offering multiple benefits and the Kinross-shire Civic Trust is on a mission to transform local towns and villages.
The Kinross-shire Civic Trust was founded in 1991. It is a non-profit-making amenity association affiliated with The Scottish Civic Trust, whose patron is HRH The Prince of Wales.
At the request of the Trust, we recently supplied them with 75m² Landscape 34 and 3 bags of our Finisher product.
Scotland has shown a keen interest in the concept of raingardens as a standard method of dealing with surface water management, flood alleviation and greenspace creation and the Kinross-shire Civic Trust has taken up the call and made excellent progress.
The Kinross-shire Civic Trust Raingardens Challenge is an ambitious project which seeks to harness the potential of using greenspace wisely in local towns and villages to create a bank of raingardens, adding valuable landscape features whilst soaking up rainfall draining off roads, roofs and other impervious areas.
So, what exactly is a raingarden?
Raingardens are vegetated features designed to slow down and use rainwater. They use plants, soils and the landscape to hold onto the rainwater and then slowly release it. They also help reduce the amount of water that gets to the sewer. Some water is taken up by the plants, some rainwater finds its way back down into the ground, and some water will evaporate. Raingardens also help clean the water, which may have picked up dirt from roofs and roads.
Raingardens are certainly as desirable from a practical perspective as they are from an aesthetic one. Incidences of flash flooding have increased alarmingly in recent years, and a deal of concern has been centred on the significant impact of the growth of hard landscaping approaches in domestic and industrial settings.
The Trust has recently worked with the famous Loch Leven’s Larder on an innovative way to transform the popular visitor attraction’s carpark into a series of small raingardens, and is actively working with the Kinross Estate (particularly the Green Hotel in Kinross) and many others.
To read more about this fantastic project, visit the wonderful Scottish Pollinators blog here.