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What's in this issue? What is a rain garden and how can you create your own? As well as an introduction to how we at South Jersey Land & Water Trust preserve areas and different ways to do it.
Rain Gardens
Over the past 7 years, SJLWT has created over 25 rain gardens and bioswales at local schools and organizations, and municipal buildings, at such locations as Pittsgrove Schools, Appel Farm, and Elmer Borough Hall. These were established with the help of many volunteers, including over 2,400 school children, who also learned about the ways in which our local streams and lakes get polluted and how rain gardens improve the condition of those waters and provide important habitat.
But what exactly is a Rain Garden?
A rain garden is a landscaped, shallow depression in which rain or snowmelt can be collected and allowed to seep naturally into the ground. This enables water to drain into the soil below and down into groundwater, helping to recharge our drinking water supply. It also prevents runoff that is laden with excess nutrients from lawns or with pollution from roofs, driveways, and roads (nonpoint source pollution) from washing into a storm drain and then into the nearest stream. As the captured water slowly percolates into the ground, pollutants are filtered out, nutrients are used by the plants, or pesticides are broken down by microorganisms.
One or more rain gardens on your lawn can add beauty to your property and provide habitat for wildlife, including serving as a home for beneficial insects, and providing food for butterflies and birds. The use of native plants in your rain garden that are good sources for the young of pollinators will increase the diversity of the butterflies you will see on your property.
As more rain occurs in New Jersey, which is projected to increase and is already happening due to climate change, there will be more rain on your property to manage. Thus, rain gardens will help with excess ponding on your property and will reduce the runoff that leads to flooding.
If you rely on a well, the runoff crossing your lawn will drain through your rain garden and increase the groundwater on which you rely. Even if you have city water, communities in Southern New Jersey all rely in part on public wells tapping the aquifers below us.
Compared to a conventional lawn, rain gardens allow 30% more water to soak into the ground. Rain gardens are effective in removing up to 90% of nutrients and chemicals and up to 80% of sediments from the rainwater runoff. Rain gardens can generally process the runoff water from a surface about three times their size, which means typical home rain gardens are around 100 to 300 square feet.
Creating Your Own Rain Garden
Establishing a rain garden is relatively easy. Because they are designed to drain away within 48 hours, they do not attract mosquitoes and they do not require the level of maintenance of a pond. Key elements for building a rain garden are to select an appropriate site with a slight slope or create one by digging a shallow depression that is at least 10 feet from your house foundation. You will need to test the soil to make sure it drains sufficiently and adjust the soil if it has too much clay or is too compacted. You will want to locate the garden within reach of a downspout or along a driveway or sidewalk and preferably in a sunny spot that is not directly over a septic system.
The specifics of size, depth, soils, and plant lists are available to you on numerous YouTube sites and through Rutgers and other websites: https://rutgersgardens.rutgers.edu/gardens/rain-garden/.
The Rain Garden Manual of New Jersey has detailed chapters and several sources of
plants: https://camden.njaes.rutgers.edu/enr/rain-gardens/. There are also many especially informative videos at the Rutgers site:
Preserving Your Land: An Introduction
Question: Imagine there’s a forested property in your area that seems likely to be developed. Maybe it has some important habitat and is occupied by several species of birds and mammals. You would like to see it be protected. What do you do?
Answer: You can work with your municipality or your local land trust to try to get it preserved.
What are the steps that are generally required to accomplish such a preservation project?
Preservation Options
First, the owner of the property must be willing to sell or donate the property. Private
landowners have the ability to protect their land from development through several different conservation techniques. The two most common methods are fee simple land sale, and sale of the development rights or easement purchase. If land is highly desirable for preservation, fee simple acquisition by a preservation program or organization is frequently the best route to pursue. Generally speaking, a buyer and seller negotiate the purchase of the land as in any land sale, but the property value, known as the "fair market value", is determined by independent appraisals carried out by professional appraisers.
Fair market value is determined by documenting other recent land sales of similar land in the same locale. Of course, the landowner is not required to sell for the appraised fair market value, but the preservation organization or program is usually unable by regulation to pay above that appraised value. Land value is determined in this way so that these acquisitions are fair to both landowner and land preservation buyer.
If a landowner wishes to preserve some land, but would like to continue owning it, easement purchase is a possible alternative. In an easement purchase the landowner sells the rights to develop the property, but can continue to own, sell, or pass the land down to heirs. This technique is frequently used to preserve land that is actively being farmed but may also be used to preserve other types of land. As with fee simple acquisition, fair market value of the easement is determined through the independent appraisal process.
Funding Sources
Every land preservation project is different, and availability of funding must be determined on a case-by-case basis. The characteristics of the property and the intended use help to determine what type of funding may be available. Funding sources can be divided into two general categories, dedicated public funds, and private nonprofit funding resources.
Dedicated Public Funding Programs: Gloucester, Salem, Cumberland, Atlantic, Cape May and Camden counties all have Farmland and Open Space Preservation programs that utilize the trust funds established in each county through a tax of a few cents per $100 of assessed property value. Municipalities may also establish local programs through such preservation funds. Counties and towns may partner with Green Acres or with the State Agriculture Development Committee (SADC) to fund projects, or with non-profit land preservation organizations such as SJLWT that have Green Acres Project Area funding. In the recent preservation of the 143-acre forest in Franklin Township, a site of headwaters of the Wild and Scenic Maurice River, SJLWT was able to utilize a combination of nonprofit, municipal, and state funding towards the preservation costs."
Private Nonprofit Funding Resources: SJLWT has Project Area funding approved by Green Acres through which 50% of the funding for a preservation project is provided by the state. SJLWT must find the other 50% of the money for each property. Sources for this may be the county, a municipality, another non-profit land trust, programs such as the Natural Resource Restoration Fund, private donations, or any combination of these or other funding resources. SJLWT's Green Acres Project Area covers the six southern counties of New Jersey, including Gloucester, Salem, Cumberland, Atlantic, Cape May and Camden. SJLWT also has a contract to serve as the land preservation coordinator for Franklin Township's farmland preservation program. Five farms in Franklin were preserved in 2023 through that collaborative effort. All were protected through easement purchase with funding from the state, the county, and the township.
Final Requirements
Land purchases in fee typically follow a standard process. Appraisals are completed to
determine the property value. Once the owner has agreed to accept the final appraised value, an agreement is signed between the owner and the buying agency or organization. A title search is conducted to make sure the property is free of any liens or other claims on it. A preliminary environmental assessment of the property must be conducted to make sure there are no hazards or any contamination on the property. If there are, they must be addressed before the sale can proceed. Then a survey is carried out to delineate the exact property lines.
Finally, the property can be acquired, and another piece of nature is saved!
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