The rain gardens that dot Ring Road on Anne Arundel Community College's campus have their roots in the mind of an honors student.
Eileen Catte, 33, brainstormed the rain garden idea for her environmental science class. To earn honors credit, she agreed to assess whether the campus would benefit from tiny gardens strategically placed near storm water drains to slow rushing water and filter out impurities before they wash into larger bodies of water.
With guidance from biology professor Susan Lamont, Catte determined that rain gardens would stop erosion near the walking trail on the Arnold campus and help prevent nitrogen and phosphorus from running into Mill and Dividing creeks.
It was Lamont, however, who took the project one step further after Catte turned in her design at the end of the fall semester. Lamont applied for funding to plant the garden, as well as four others on campus. She received more than $24,000 in grant money from the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Trust in February and, with the help of donations, brought the project to fruition last month.
"I was amazed at the way it took off," said Catte, who hopes to build a career in environmental building design. "It was really refreshing to see so many people were interested."
Catte and Lamont joined about 40 students, staff members and others to put in more than 600 plants April 24 along the campus' main road. Contractors had cut notches in the curbs so that rain water would be diverted into the gardens.
Rain gardens are a way to cut back on the damage wrought by development, said Steve Ailstock, chairman of the college's biology department. Instead of rain soaking into the soil and replenishing groundwater, it now washes over parking lots and roads, dragging sediment, motor oil, fertilizer and other pollution into storm water drains. The drains feed the polluted water into the Chesapeake Bay.
Nitrogen and phosphorus, which have caused an overgrowth of algae in the bay, can be absorbed by rain gardens and help native plant species thrive, Ailstock said. The gardens, some of which have trees, also can prevent erosion after heavy rains.
"The best thing you can do for water is to slow it down to give biological processes a chance to clean and filter the water," Ailstock said.
Catte proposed the garden project to Lamont as part of an honors contract, an initiative launched in the fall to revive the college's honors program. Under the contract program, a student can convert a regular course into an honors course by agreeing to do research or field work and to receive 15 additional hours of one-on-one instruction.
