we have offer you a certificate which of course has your names on it congratulations and you are the winners of the fifty thousand dollars extreme agree the collected water to penetrate down into the soil instead of running up where the water come from usually it's runoff from roofs streets driveways along ends so it just keeps water low not just the all the rainwater run straight into the straight and then into the storm drains we think we have a great opportunity with our property to demonstrate all the principles of sustainable landscaping by capturing water in multiple ways including rain gardens rain barrels flowers it's given back to now turk rass it's need for fertilisers we also see this is an opportunity to help unify our street and for the position the city of maplewood as a leader in sustainable landscaping we also hope to serve as an example to  friends neighbors and visitors by getting other residents to think about the ways they can incorporate these principles into their yards and while she will tell you that's the most important bit of all our little kitty brand when wants to make over so she can enjoy the butterfl and so so anyway they really had to work their way through and then there were fourteen yard staff were judged and so they had to make it through the judging process to get down four and then down to t show they really had to do their work to qualify themselves and to put themselves in the position when this is not just really about your yacht as residents of the community because each yard is that little piece and so we have to try to make it so that we have a situation where people understand that they need to do things in their yard and so your yard will be a great showcase for us to be have to send people down by your house and say look at what we've done over there this gives you some good ideas of things you can do and so along the lines to make this possible there were many partners involved in this process and so probably the largest partner was the washington ramsey metro watershed and and so they had contributed ten thousand dollars towards the effort out here and they not only of course do this but there are so many things in the city that they do that help us out the ramsey county library contributed meeting space throughout the to earthworks landscape architects who are represented here if you're going to call oh was a big help in the effort they gave us some money bought five hundred dollars they also gave some goodie bags and whatnot for various events linders also contributed to the effort and so these are all people that went into the pro happy and really grateful to the city of maplewood we applied for the for the make over but what we never thought in a million years that we would get it given just the number of people who are showing up to move with the kickoff meeting and to sign to capture runoff that would otherwise end up running into a storm sewer into the nearest body of water the goal is to stop water where it drops allow the water to soak in and slowly filtering out any the new transfer of pollutants in might be carrying and that can be done and a small scale or larger scale we're hoping that homeowners by becoming aware of how the water flows on their property they can do their share of he draining to the garden whether there's any other areas in the lawn where water will fall onto that and a little bit of it will soak in but most of it might roll off into the rain garden then we'll also be looking at the soil and so will be using  dig a hole into the ground pulling out that soil that will help us tell how deep the rain garden should be and the third thing we'll do is to dig a hole fill it with water and through repeated tests will measure how fast the water  will infiltrate into the hole and then we can get a better idea of what kind of conditions will be expected to create in the marine garden to help us in poultry that water to help other community members learn how to figure out where the water is flowing on their property so they can best infiltrate it without having it run down and go into the nearby sewers and into the nearest body of water which in this case is the mississippi river you might think that that's a simple process but there are a few steps that we are going to take this evening that will help homeowners make some decisions about how to build their garden how deep it should be how big it should be where to position it you never see that works in your area you know the bas basically a hundred square feet everywhere from outside outside it's going to be the hundred square feet the berm is isn't going to be counted in that will be just behind the ring garden because they are that we want to capture has to be that storage area in front of the berm so in this case with our downs boat running this way we do want the berm to wrap around in such a way that it's just behind our ponding area for the rain garden that will allow the most water to come in and fill in the pond up to that six inch depth and then when you're starting to consider where the water is flowing st paul there they're designed to capture street runoff and those areas infiltrate large volumes of water extreme dream make over is a collaboration between ramsi washington metro watershed district and the city of maplewood the idea was conceived to encourage and and inspire people to consider using a lot of sustainable techniques in their yards to help water to help conserve resources to encourage habitat improvement maplewood has always been on the leading edge as far as i'm been involved in watershed  work they've had rain gardens on a large scale and they've been a model not just locally but nationally for their i would say innovative approach to taking care of their stormwater on their streets and their educators that their goal with the city of maplewood is to get everybody involved and everybody onboard and in the process and that saving money and taking care of the environment at the same time rainwater something that we need to get into those storms or pipes and into those like streams as possible we can think of it as something that we can hang on to and use as a resource working with the city of maplewood to install some rain barrels and show people how to install randall under a typical downspout that most importantly with the rain barrel is that you are thinking of the storm water as a resource rather than as a waste product to get rid of as quickly as water from your roof that would otherwise go down your driveway and down the street this water can be used in your garden in your heating your flower beds in your shrubs beds you can attach a soaker hose for instance and run it through your beds and water as needed it's a great thing it's it's a relatively inexpensive and you can save on the water bill so it's free water there's several aspects to extreme green make over if you are maplewood resident and live residence in the yard and we're looking at a number of this is in the yard we have green design grants stating that meets residence needs and benefits to the environment and then tonight we're going to be talking about using rain example with lots and lots of shade so your air conditioning unit i'd say from the west side it's all taken care of but many houses most houses don't have say the shade tree in the appropriate place so think about that that's right there's a huge tree in many in many new developments there's very few trees efficient resource use now that gets into use and water certainly and also fertilizers and pesticide tolerant adapt to our environment you want to have a spigot will go right here you want to how that as low as possible on some of them are are deliberately placed high enough so that you can get a watering can under neat there and that is handy for that purpose but you want to be able to drain this is as completely as as practical again so for that which makes it easier when you're emptying it at the end of the season and you get all  water out of there so it can all refresh itself you also want to make sure that you have an overflow hose because if you're going especially if you're getting this from a downspout the reason you put gutters on your house in the first place is because you don't want the water falling right down next to your foundation where it can make your basement wet so you want to have an overflow hose that's going to direct away from the house and in a heavy rain that rain barrel will fill up in fifteen minutes so while well coming over this way so we're this is where we're going to set this up so we're going to get this some of these pieces out of the way a little bit and this is the parts that you have your downspout already so this part was down here like this looks like it'll work pretty well if we reuse it up here like this so what i'm going to do is try to get this one apart here compared to watering from your home there's not going to be a lot of water pressure here and it's not it's only a it seems like it would take a lot longer you can put as long a hole as you want on this and water anywhere in the yard but it tends to be t think that's huge because the little things start doing a little thing says he'll never really isn't that little it's you know it's a step up when you start doing that people understand how corn it is and they see it they go you know what i want that for my want to be not only is a look good it's functional it actually does something for the environment so i think  ten years now we also put them install them in parks this is one of our our street gardens that a resident elect to have put in on their corner and there's there's a curb cut that takes water from the street into the garden and the plants planted there will take up that water flourish on the rainwater that's the runoff that is in the