Rain gardens: “It's not just an engineering solution. It's also landscape. It’s biodiversity”

Jackson says collaboration is key when working at the forefront of green infrastructure schemes.

“All of these people have to be involved in delivering good, green infrastructure for the future,” says Jackson on the Collaborative Sandwich, a diagram of an integrated design team.

Phoenix’s research at The Avenues has shown that rain gardens help to remove pollutants from water such as, oil and fuel, exhaust deposits, metals and microplastics from tyres.

“Very tiny attractive forces between the pollutant and the soil particles cause electrostatic attraction. It’s a bit like if you rub your hair with a balloon and the hair sticks to the balloon. That helps the pollutant stick to the soil,” Phoenix explains.

The Avenues project features test gardens to evaluate the result of the pollutants from the roads and road salting during the winter months. They found that the rain gardens removed pollutants but not road salt.

“We wanted to do some work to demonstrate that the pollution was indeed being removed by the rain gardens and to explore some different soil mixes and scenarios to test which ones were working well.” says Phoenix.

It was also about getting the most out of the project, Jackson explains. To get funding you must make a project worth its time. If the street is going to be dug up, then you should get as many positives out of the disruption as you can.

Jackson concludes: “We need to get as many of these solutions on the ground as we can, but to do it in a way that benefits the street as a whole. It’s not just an engineering solution. It’s also landscape. It’s biodiversity. And it’s about creating economic conditions, so people want to dwell, they want to shop and they want to be there.”

Find out more: Watch back the Climate Resilience session, view the slides or the LAWPRO Report