LeMoyne’s New Rain Garden is Beautiful and Functional

LeMoyne is very excited to announce that its new rain garden is complete and helping to manage the rainwater as intended! LeMoyne is grateful to the City of Tallahassee’s TAPP program for providing design guidelines and a grant for the purchase of the plantings. Our friends Donna Lagare, Jody Walthall and Jackson Strauss from Native Nurseries specified and delivered the plants, soil amendments and pine straw, and helped to plant the three River Birch trees which will also offer shade in the summer months.

As LeMoyne developed its Art for Always Master Plan, a major goal was to better manage the stormwater on the property.  For decades, unmanaged rainwater flowed off the building roofs and down the sloped property causing erosion in the landscape and splash on the buildings causing wood rot.

When dear friend Dr. Charlie Rockwood came for a tour of LeMoyne and saw the water issues at LeMoyne he commented that he had to help get this fixed so that the beautiful sculptures in the garden did not have to suffer in the “swamp jungle” anymore. With a generous donation from Dr. Rockwood, new gutters, downspouts and strategically placed underground piping, was installed around the Meginnis-Munroe House protecting the building and making the new gardens much less susceptible to erosion.

So where does all the collected water go? To slow down the water flow and help keep most of it on site, LeMoyne designed and installed a beautiful rain garden integrated into its landscaping. The design adds landscape interest to the gardens and serves as an educational component demonstrating how functional and beautiful rain gardens are while helping to reduce stormwater runoff and improve ground water quality.

LeMoyne was able to purchase trees, plants, soil amendments and mulch for new raingarden through a grant partnership with City of Tallahassee’s TAPP program.

Volunteers work with Native Nurseries staff to install soil amendments and plant trees in LeMoyne’s new Rain Garden.

A footbridge provides path over new raingarden at LeMoyne.