The Swissvale Hill Rain Garden project was completed in 2021 and is located on three 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 nine 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.
Rain garden, summer 2025. Photo by Nathan J Shaulis, Porter Loves.
Monitoring equipment at the rain garden. Photo by Nathan J Shaulis, Porter Loves.
Volunteers prepare a new garden bed
Rain garden during a light rain
Rain garden during a light rain
Rendering of Swissvale Hill Rain Garden
Partners
Ethos Collaborative
C&R Landscape Development
The Borough of Wilkinsburg
Funding
Richard King Mellon Foundation
The Heinz Endowments
Phase 2
The Swissvale and Hill Phase 2 Green Stormwater Infrastructure project aims to transform three parcels of land owned by the Wilkinsburg Borough into a series of rain gardens this fall starting in September 2026.
This project is designed to capture stormwater runoff from Hill Avenue and Hunter Street and divert the runoff into rain gardens planted with native plants and specialized soils to soak up the rainwater. This second phase of the project will connect to and overflow into our existing Swissvale and Hill Avenue Green Infrastructure site which features multiple rain gardens as well as subsurface storage. Adding this additional capture area and capacity will help us continue to improve Nine Mile Run and reduce pollutants getting into our rivers and streams.
Additional landscaping elements such as trees, site furnishings and artistic signage will be incorporated into the final landscape design. We will be conducting community outreach to help refine the plant selections, artistic design and site furnishings as part of this process. Join us for What’s Growing On at Swissvale Hill Rain Garden on Tuesday, August 25th. Find additional emails about that event in this newsletter’s events section.
This project is made possible by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protections Growing Greener Grants Program.
