Visits to Our 2026 Green Infrastructure Sites
To prepare for a summer full of green infrastructure building, we visited all of our sites for the upcoming spring, summer, and fall projects.
Memramcook Rain Garden Site
The first site we will feature is a rain garden that we are installing at Abbey-Landry School in Memramcook.
The soil at this site is clay, so we want the garden to be on the shallower side. It will be located to the right of a human-made pond that the school is building, and all excess water from the garden will drain into the pond. This is a very wet area, so we have selected clay-tolerant and water-loving plants for the garden.
This garden will be installed on June 10, so keep an eye out for photos of our completed work!
Photo 1: Abbey-Landry School future rain garden location.
Salisbury Rain Garden Site
Our second rain garden will be located off one of the Salisbury trails connected to Highland Park.
While the Memramcook garden is being built with the help of students, the Salisbury garden will be our major rain garden volunteer event.
We are planning to install it on either August 13 or August 14. We plan to make this garden quite large, so we will need all the help we can get. This site is also mainly clay, but we found it to be a little drier than the Memramcook site, which gives us the freedom to plant a wider variety of species.
The site is located near a beaver dam, and we are hoping the beavers will not disturb the garden as it becomes established!
Photo 2: Salisbury future rain garden location.
Dieppe Mini Forest Site
Our final visit was to the Dieppe Mini Forest site. This mini forest will be built off Aquatic Street, behind the outdoor gym.
This is a new type of green infrastructure for PWA, and we are excited to continue the planning process and involve our volunteers. We have selected the location, site preparation approach, and plant species. We are now finalizing a planting map and reaching out to teachers and community groups that may be interested in helping us plant the mini forest in September.
High school teachers interested in involving their students in a hands-on tree-planting initiative can contact our project leader at vanessa.l@petitcodiacwatershed.org.
Photo 3: Dieppe Mini Forest future site location.
Rain Garden Maintenance Committee
We are looking for community members from across our watershed to help maintain approximately 10 existing rain gardens throughout the summer and fall.
We will host a training session and workshop to welcome new committee members, plan maintenance visits for the upcoming season, and refresh our knowledge of the care rain gardens require.
Members of the Rain Garden Maintenance Committee are expected to maintain a rain garden on their own time at least twice a month. This can be the same garden or different gardens. Depending on the size of the garden, maintenance may take anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of hours.
After maintaining a garden, members are expected to share an update in our private Rain Garden Maintenance Committee Facebook group using prompts that will be provided. Members without Facebook, or those who prefer not to post in the group, may email the project leader instead.
Interested community members can sign up using this form.
Questions about the Rain Garden Maintenance Committee can be sent to vanessa.l@petitcodiacwatershed.org.
Photo 4: The rain garden at the head of the GreenPark Drive neighbourhood trail, maintained by committee member Pamela O’Brien.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the many partners and supporters who keep the Water Guardian project alive!
Thank you to the Canadian Water Agency, the TD Friends of the Environment Fund, Green Communities Canada, Trees for Life, Abbey-Landry School, the City of Dieppe, the Town of Salisbury, Loriella Farm, Parks Canada, and Yard Outfitters.