Help the environment AND get free landscaping? Sign me up!

Help the environment AND get free landscaping?  Sign me up!

LADWP just put word out about a new program to benefit the environment and, by proxy, homeowners in the North East San Fernando Valley.  It’s called LA Rain Gardens and I am beyond excited.

I would be first in line for this program if only I was a homeowner.  Believe me, being a renter wouldn’t normally stop me.  I constantly ask my landlady if I can do things to her house and she lets me.  But for this FANTASTIC program, you have to have gutters, and my house does not.

The program is sponsored by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, TreePeople, and Generation Water.  The purpose of LA Rain Gardens is to install 310 rain gardens throughout the valley to capture rain and prevent run-off.  The rain will be reabsorbed into the ground and naturally filtered instead of flowing into gutters and taking pollutants with it.

I don’t even know how long I’ve been wishing for something like this.  Los Angeles has been suffering from droughts for decades and every time we have a big storm and I see the rivers of water rushing into the gutters and out into the sea in a big, frothy rapid of murky garbage and chemicals I wonder why we can’t capture that rain and put it to good use.  LA Rain Gardens is a beautiful step in the right direction.  The next step should be rain barrels!  But that’s another topic.

There are two options in the program.  You can have LA Rain Gardens install a rain garden for you for FREE or you can do it yourself (get the instructions here) and be reimbursed up to $500, with a maximum of 2 gardens per household.

To find out if your home qualifies, visit the LA Rain Gardens website.  If it does, send me pictures!!  I’d love to do a follow up post of people who have taken advantage of this program and see how the rain gardens turn out.