New rain garden bed at Jardin del Rio in Elysian Valley
Last Saturday, February 18th 2012, KYCC completed our second recycled concrete rain garden. This one is at Jardin del Rio in Elysian Valley. I am getting more photos shortly and will post more about it. Read the rest of this entry »
Sunday February 26th – Eagle Rockdale Community Garden
Terraced rain garden under construction in Long Beach
This is a work party: volunteers needed to help move earth, broken concrete. It’s not a spectator event – it’s work. Expect to work hard! The day will begin with a brief lesson on how passive rainwater harvesting terrace gardens function, but mostly it will be digging, lugging broken concrete, and creating terraced rain gardens! Lend a hand for as long or short as you’re up for.
Eagle Rockdale Community Garden 1103 Rockdale Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90041
The front gate to the Long Beach Community Peace Garden - KYCC's initial recycled concrete rain garden bed is on the left, second bed on the right.
Here are some photos taken this year of the Martin Luther King Park’s Long Beach Community Peace Garden rain garden beds (shown during their installation here and here.)
A closer look at the left bed, including thriving artichoke. Rainwater drains from the adjacent sidewalk onto this bed. The bed is shaped roughly like the letter "C" with the top layer level, and the opening in the C facing uphill (to the left in this image.) There's not a great deal of slope at the site, so the level raised bed is fairly low - only about a foot off the ground at its highest point on the right side of this photo.
On August 27th 2011, KYCC held our second work party to finish off the second phase of Long Beach Peace Garden’s recycled concrete rain garden bed. Read about the first phase at the earlier article here.
The first bed is on the left side of the front gate; the second is on the right. Here are the beginnings of the project. The first concrete pieces go at the lowest point. From there the level layers are built up:
Long Beach Peace Garden bed No.2 first layers going down
Seen along the bottom of the above photo, we did a straight line leading to the garden entrance. These terraces tend toward more wavy curvy lines, but in some places it’s fun to something slightly formal (that still ends up looking fairly informal because it’s broken pieces.) When incorporating straight lines like this, it’s good to make sure sure the edge of each piece of broken concrete is is a straight line, so they all line up nicely. In the middle of garden we did a curve, which is a little more difficult because few pieces of concrete have concave edges, but it does create a good seating area where a people can face each other and have a conversation. Read the rest of this entry »
Recycled concrete rain garden bed at the Long Beach Community Peace Garden
Last Saturday, August 13th 2011, KYCC crews worked with Long Beach volunteers to create a new recycled concrete rain garden at the Long Beach Community Peace Garden.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. statue watches over the park
The Long Beach Community Peace Garden is located inside Martin Luther King Park on Lemon Street in the middle of Long Beach, across Alamitos Avenue from Long Beach City College’s Pacific Coast Campus.
It’s a historically underserved Long Beach neighborhood with good sized African-American and Latino populations.
The Community Peace Garden is a community garden with a series of raised beds and a small outdoor classroom area, all surrounded by a fence. KYCC has been meeting with the garden leaders for a couple months, discussing designs and other concerns. Folks at the peace garden were interested in creating an additional garden bed, including some seating, in the area along the front of the site.
Last Saturday, KYCC gathered, with our crew, gardeners and other volunteers. Read the rest of this entry »
