What are green infrastructures? These are areas that have either been created or converted into a naturalized system to facilitate a desire or need in a eco-friendly way. Rain gardens and bio-swales are a few examples of green infrastructures that help facilitate run-off water with the help of native plants.
ELM has worked with clients on the planning, constructing, planting, and maintaining newly created or existing green infrastructures.
ELM has worked with clients on the planning, constructing, planting, and maintaining newly created or existing green infrastructures.
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In 2018, East Lake Baptist Church in Crown Point, IN hired engineers and excavator companies to do the structural design and initial groundwork for the rain garden. The design was so the rain run-off from approximately 1/3 of the parking lot will drain into the rain garden to assist with better water infiltration during high rainfall events, reducing flooding.
ELM did the finishing groundwork, installing medium size river rock, and selected and planted over 1,200 native plant plugs suited for the site's conditions. The 4,500 square foot rain garden services approximately 15,000 square feet of parking lot run-off. |
This is a project which a Home Owner Association (HOA) in Dyer, IN was seeking a more aesthetically pleasing retention pond that unfortunately has been dominated by invasive cattails.
Cattails are great at filtering out pollutants; however, too many is not a good sign. Cattails can produce a lot of biomass and inhibit water flow. This can lead to algae blooms and greatly reduce oxygen in the water needed for our fishes and water insects. This, in turn, can make a more ideal environment for mosquitoes. ELM came in the summer of 2018 and worked on a four year project removing invasive cattails and re-vegetating the retention pond with a diverse emergent wetland plant community. This is sure to benefit the local wildlife and pollinators, provide aesthetic beauty and hopefully help encourage other groups to adopt more green infrastructures. |
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Discovery Charter School in Porter County had a existing garden that needed improvements. ELM proposed the idea of converting the native garden into more of a rain garden. The area was naturally slope with noticeable run-off coming from the parking lot.
Invasive and weedy plants were removed initially to reduce competition. Then, we had to do a little groundwork to assist the direction of rain run-off from the parking lot into the garden. Over 900 native plants were planted with some assistance from students at Discovery. Dead trees on the end of the garden were dropped for safety concerns. The dead trees were repurpose to provide a natural border edging to the rain garden. |
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