Swissvale Hill Rain Garden
Our most recently completed project is located on 3 vacant lots owned by the Borough of Wilkinsburg. The total cost of this project was $125,000, including design and construction, which was only possible through generous funding from the Richard King Mellon Foundation and the Heinz Endowments. We estimate that this project will capture up to 750,000 gallons of stormwater annually. A new catch-basin on Hill Ave captures and delivers water to the rain garden system. The two rain gardens are connected, and overflow into an underground storage system. We planted the site with 9 native trees and dozens of rain garden plants, as well as seeding the site with a meadow mix. As a result, what were until recently a series of vacant lots will soon be a beautiful native garden, attractive to pollinators and open to the public. Our goal is to raise funds to build a second phase of this project on the other side of Taft Way to greatly increase the amount of water we can capture and divert from the sewer system. This project was designed by UpstreamPgh and Ethos Collaborative, and constructed by C&R Landscape Development.
Partners
Ethos Collaborative
C&R Landscape Development
The Borough of Wilkinsburg
Funding
Richard King Mellon Foundation
The Heinz Endowments
