Last week, the Yardblog post was about green infrastructure. So this week, I thought it would be a good idea to write about something a little more specific about green infrastructure and yards. Obviously, rain gardens are a perfect topic! If you search this website about them, you will find lots of info. Rain gardens are amazing gardening items and extremely popular these days because they have enormous benefits for a property and nature. They create micro-habitats, improve the health of pollinators, look incredible, naturally fight mosquitoes and many others. Though there’re lots of good reasons to put one in your yard, the number one thing rain gardens are designed to do is manage stormwater. With the right placement in a yard and with the right design, a rain garden can turn a soggy backyard into a paradise or transform a boring spot into a eco-wonderland. Read more after the break.

Many in design to engineering have called suburbs “a tumor on the planet”. Yet, the suburban landscape is a treasure of opportunity for a better future. Even single-family homes are remarkable tool of transformative power with sustainability. This isn’t the normal thing you may read about suburbia though. Cities are more often championed as the ideal for social, economic, creative and ecological improvement, but this view is myopic in its prognosis. Everything happening in large cities from green infrastructure to urban farming to bike/pedestrian lanes to renewable energy has a greater potential for success in suburbs at lower costs, more ease of application and would serve a greater number of people. This is a huge topic to unpack, so in this blog I’m covering only one of the ways suburban living can make the world more eco-friendly, namely green infrastructure.

This week, we found out we have won a grant from Sustainable Jersey and the Nature Conservancy to reforest land within the Township of South Orange Village. We are super excited about finding out this news. This is the second award in two years we’ve won for reforestation in South Orange, and helps us continue to show a commitment to environmentalism in the state. The project will be half park, half reforestation while enhancing wildlife, acting as green infrastructure and fighting climate change. More details after the break.