Turtle Island
This is a bioretention garden (rain garden) project for the Turtle Island Children’s Center in Montpelier, Vermont, made in collaboration with UVM Extension Master Gardeners, the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps, and the Turtle Island Children’s Center. The garden retains and filters runoff from 5000 square feet of parking lot and roof structures on the campus, preventing it from entering the North Branch of the Winooski River at the bottom of the property. Given recent heavy rain events in Vermont, the garden needed to replace non-percolating silt/clay topsoil with a sandy filtration material to a depth of 12 inches. The existing soil was used to build the retention berms. The retention cell was planted with native shrubs, graminoids, and perennials, many specific to to Montpelier’s ecoregion. The garden is meant to serve educational goals of the outdoor-focused Turtle Island Children’s center, offering the children and families interaction with plants, pollinators, and bird life. To get children up close to the plants and pollinators without disturbing and compacting the soil and plants, an accessible-width bog walk was created as a hardscape feature.
