Sunset Beach Rain Garden Restoration

A huge shout out to the more than 45 volunteers who joined us in March to help us restore the rain garden at Sunset Beach. The volunteers generously donated over 100 hours; they dug out yards and yards of invasive grass and buttercup and cut back invasive blackberry. They replaced these invasives with a variety of native plants including red flowering currant, serviceberry, Oregon grape, evergreen huckleberry, camas, sword fern, and small flowered alumroot. Finally, 12 yards of mulch were spread over the restored areas.

This important restoration was done in close partnership with the Snoqualmie Tribe and Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust.

The Snoqualmie Tribe generously donated several of their Environmental and Natural Resources technical staff who completed a thorough assessment of the functionality of the rain garden and followed up with a list of improvements which included native plants. Mountains to Sound Greenway supports all of our landscaping volunteer events with tools and they also supplied many of the native plants for this project.

The rain garden at Sunset Beach is a demonstration project of low-impact development techniques. The garden can store and filter rainwater that drains into it from the Sunset Beach esplanade and surrounding areas. Impurities in the stormwater are filtered out by the plants in the rain garden before the water enters the water table underground.