Terrace Gardens

When your street is resurfaced, the City has a program for cost-sharing, to help you build a rain garden on your terrace.  This is a voluntary program.  These rain gardens have an opening the the curb, feeding water from the street into the rain garden.

 

But there's another kind of garden, shown above, that you can easily build yourself, without help from the city, and at minimal cost.

Terrace rain gardens take runoff from the sidewalk, so they get twice the rain, compared to an ordinary garden.

There are three important things when you start your garden:

• Place your garden where the sidewalk slopes towards your garden.
• Remove soil, so the garden is below the surface of the sidewalk--otherwise, your garden won't accept sidewalk runoff.
• Add compost or organic matter, to compensate for the topsoil you removed.

More info.