RORG’s 2023 Year in Review

By the RORG Team

Welcome to RORG’s Year in Review — our fourth one! Before we start, we’d like to express our gratitude to all of the volunteers that gift us their time and talent. We also thank University of Illinois Extension, Extension’s Natural Resources, Energy, and Environment program, and Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant for their leadership and UIUC Facilities & Services for their continued support. And thank you to everyone that follows and interacts with us throughout the year! From the renovation’s start, Eliana’s goal for RORG is to combine vibrant engagement with education and we hope you see that in everything we do. Hope you enjoy our look back!

LATE WINTER

Public Engagement
In early 2023, the RORG Team welcomed two new members to the Student Team, Abbey Ascolani and Erin Schimenti. Abbey and Erin came to us through the UIUC Department of Communication program, which offers internships and academic credit for students in their major. Abbey helps to promote RORG and distribute knowledge of rain gardens and native plants to campus and the greater public. While RORG Student Engagement Coordinator Maddy Craft studied abroad, Erin filled in to enhance student participation at the rain garden, supporting the development of a student docent program and various RORG events.

In March, we kicked off our fourth annual Mulch Madness native plant competition. As a parody of the NCAA’s “March Madness,” this contest promotes native plant knowledge to the hundreds of people playing along and thousands of people interacting on our Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook pages. Of 28 competing species, 2023’s Mulch Madness champion was Swamp Milkweed after winning the tough final battle against a previous champion, Butterflyweed. Congratulations to Swamp Milkweed, and to Beth Eves, who had the winning bracket!

RORG’s Late Winter Presentations

• February 9: Starting the year strong, RORG Assistant Director, Layne Knoche gave a presentation to the Illinois Native Plant Society: Central Chapter. He discussed how rain gardens and native plants can improve local water quality by reducing flooding and water pollution. He uses RORG as a stellar example of this idea. A recording of the presentation is available online!

In the Rain Garden
RORG welcomed 2023 with an abnormally warm start, reaching 65°F on January 3rd! These weather extremes are always a good reminder that the rain garden is built to withstand quick fluctuations from hot to cold and from flood to drought. This resilience is achieved through the use of engineered soils and carefully selected native plant species that are adapted to these shifts in climate.

Continuing the trend of above-average temperatures, RORG awoke in late February this year, nearly two weeks earlier than usual. The early emergence of spring ephemerals prompted the RORG Team to enlist the help of our dedicated volunteers. The task: to meticulously clear away the thick, leathery blanket of fallen Sycamore leaves that had accumulated over the winter in areas where our tulips were trying to emerge. These leaves, dense and wet, decay slowly, posing a risk of smothering the delicate spring vegetation as it pushed upward. We strategically left fallen leaves and past-season perennial foliage in place where possible, providing a protective layer for pollinators that were still overwintering.

SPRING

Public Engagement
During Earth Week, the Student Sustainability Leadership Council hosted their annual Green Quad Day on campus. Abbey and Erin represented RORG, and in the days leading up to the event, Erin put her artistic skills to work as she chalked promotional messages on campus sidewalks, encouraging those passing by to check us out.

^{Erin Schimenti and Abbey Ascolani braved a chilly, windy day to staff a table for RORG at this spring’s Green Quad Day.}

In May, after years of dreaming and months of development, the Red Oak Rain Garden virtual map officially went live! Piper Siblik, former RORG Student Team member, worked with Eliana, Layne, and other leaders to build the interactive map for volunteers, community members, and visitors to explore and learn about the plants of RORG. The map, which includes the locations of each species along with plant attributes and photos, can be used on a desktop or mobile device. We encourage you to check it out!

In late spring, we said farewell to two of our Student Team members, Gabe Harper and Piper Siblik. Gabe, who was our Volunteer Coordinator over the past few years, graduated with a master’s degree in Sustainable Urban Design from UIUC and accepted a position with a design firm in Chicago. Piper graduated from UIUC with a dual major in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, concentrating in Ecosystem Stewardship and Restoration Ecology and Geography + Geographic Information Sciences concentrating in GIS. She took a position as a wetland scientist way out in Montana! We feel fortunate to have had them on the Team, and wish them well!

RORG’s Spring Tours and Presentations:

• March 28: Layne met with Professor Rob Kanter’s ESE 311 class to talk about rain gardens and their role in handling climate and environmental issues we currently face.
• March 29: Layne gave a tour of RORG to DeWitt/Macon/Piatt County Master Gardeners. 
• April 13: Eliana and Layne presented “Reduce Flooding & Water Pollution: How Rain Gardens and Native Plants Improve Local Water Quality” for an Extension Everyday Environment webinar. Watch the recording here.
• April 21: The RORG Student Team represented the Rain Garden at this year’s Green Quad Day. 

Spring Blogs

• Mulch Madness 2023
• Mapping the Red Oak Rain Garden
• Looking back on my RORG Experience: Piper Siblik

In the Rain Garden
A month after the removal of leaves in late winter, a spring cleanup occurred in early April with the help of our volunteers and students from the UIUC ASLA Student Chapter and the UIUC Beekeeping Club. To kick off the event, Extension’s State Pollinator Coordinator, Brodie Dunn, provided attendees with a presentation on insect interactions with native plants as part of our guest mini-lecture series.

^{Extension State Pollinator Coordinator Brodie Dunn provided a mini-lesson on overwintering pollinators to volunteers during RORG’s Spring Cleanup. Photos by Layne Knoche and Abbey Ascolani.}

RORG’s display of ‘Prinses Irene’ Tulips and Virginia Bluebells ended in late May but lasted long enough this year to provide students with a great place for an orange and blue graduation photoshoot in nature. Other spring-blooming plants such as Foamflower, Shooting Star, Wild Geranium, and Wild Hyacinth all put on great shows throughout the season.

RORG was designed so that maintenance needs would decrease over time, and this year, we started to notice a difference. Across most of the rain garden, our groundcover species have filled in, decreasing the total area of weeding needed as those intentional plants outcompete weed seedlings. Still, our many volunteers from the Champaign County Master Gardeners, the East-Central Illinois Master Naturalists, and the greater community put in diligent time and effort to stewardship at the rain garden.

SUMMER

Public Engagement
This summer, after Gabe and Piper left, we quickly replenished the Student Team members with additions from the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant Internship Program. Maddy Craft took over Gabe’s position as Volunteer Coordinator and worked with other interns Chantal Korde and Gary Liu on stormwater initiatives for the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy. All of the interns worked on tasks for RORG from time to time as needed. Read their blog to learn more about their experience with us!

In July, RORG Volunteers received an entomology lesson from Sreelakshmi Suresh, an entomology grad student at UIUC. They taught the group about the wide range of pollinators, their habitats and food sources, as well as identification tips.

^{Sreelakshmi Suresh, a UIUC Entomology graduate student, provides a mini-lesson on pollinators at the rain garden.
Photos by Amanda Christenson.}

While RORG Team members provided early summer tours to the Champaign County Master Gardener Sprouts and the Illinois Native Plant Society: Central Chapter, Eliana and Layne were working closely with Student Team members Maddy Craft and Erin Schimenti to develop a docent program that is engaging, informative, and fun. In August, the students piloted the program by giving 4 tours reaching nearly 100 students, staff, and faculty!

^{RORG Student Team members Maddy Craft and Erin Schimenti piloted the new Docent Program with guided tours for students returning for the fall semester. Photos by Amanda Christenson and Jedidiah Kim.}

RORG’s Summer Tours and Presentations:

• June 3: Amanda Christenson, Extension Outreach Associate and friend of RORG, provided a tour of the rain garden to the Champaign County Master Gardener Sprouts as part of their program.
• June 16: Layne gave a tour of the rain garden to the Illinois Native Plant Society: Central Chapter. 
• July 13: Brent Lewis, UIUC Facilities & Services Landscape Architect (and another friend of RORG), included the rain garden as part of a campus tour during the Big 10 and Friends Landscape Conference with more than 50 university professionals in attendance from across the country. We heard that RORG did our campus proud!
• Mid-August: During Orientation Week, the RORG Student Team provided tours to nearly 100 students from Unit One/Allen Hall, Sustainability LLC, and the Sustainable Design major. Tours were also provided to campus faculty and staff. 

Summer Blogs:

• Looking back on my RORG Experience: Gabe Harper
• RORG Intern Travels: Maddy Craft
• Looking back on my RORG experience: Summer 2023 Stormwater Interns

In the Rain Garden
RORG’s hot-colored summer blooms quickly blanketed areas of the rain garden in early June. Purple Poppy Mallow, Rosinweed, Compass Plant, Butterflyweed, Royal Catchfly, and ‘Hummelo’ Betony continued to bloom through July in the sunny areas of the garden, while Cardinal Flower, Rozanne Geranium, and Joe Pye Weed added color to the shadier areas. By August, summer blooms began to fade to the tones of our late-summer and early-fall species like our Nodding Onion, which welcomes student back to campus each year.

Master Naturalists Linda Bailey and Karen Folk identified a recurring challenge for the volunteers: removing weeds that sprout in our crushed granite borders. Pulling weeds from the border disrupts the granite’s compaction, and makes it possible for other weed seeds to germinate, making this a Sisyphean task without relief. Until this year, that is. Happily, Eliana obtained campus permission for the RORG Team to use a garden torch on the borders, which allows for weed removal with minimal disruption. In August, Layne successfully used the torch with his sidekick, Maddy, to burn the weeds. The lesson learned here is applicable to other sites with a similar crushed granite border design.

The 2023 Drought
It was another very dry year at the rain garden. After several consecutive months of well-below-average precipitation, the RORG Team decided it would be best to conduct an emergency watering of the garden in June. Multiple weeks without a drop of rain can stress even long-established plantings, and since RORG’s plantings are still relatively new and are developing roots, Amanda Christenson and volunteer Bob Jacobs deeply watered the entire garden to give plants the best chance of pulling through. RORG’s native plants are resilient, but we did lose some to the drought. An assessment was done this fall to determine the extent of damage and plans for design edits in 2024 are underway.

With droughts and drastic weather occurring in Illinois, Eliana joined the Spotlight on Natural Resources podcast to discuss how we can help build healthy landscapes in this extreme weather.

FALL

Public Engagement
This fall, we hosted two more guest presenters: Extension Horticulture Educator Ryan Pankau and NRES Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist Joy O’Keefe. Ryan taught our Friday morning volunteer group a mini-lesson in September. Volunteers learned about RORG’s trees; the Sycamore and Red Oak, their internal structures, and health signs. Joy taught our volunteers about bats in October to kick off the spooky season. They learned about the different species of bats in the Champaign-Urbana area, their habitat and feeding behaviors, and the threat many are under from climate change and human development.

The Student Team kept busy through the fall months. Maddy and Erin continued to provide rain garden tours to the campus community, and in October, the full Student Team represented RORG at the Fall Green Quad Day on campus. Maddy created an eye-catching “What’s in the Box?” game, encouraging many pedestrians to play along. Through the tabling event, they were able to reach out to many new students to tell them about RORG!

^{RORG Student Team members provided tours of the rain garden and staffed a table at this year’s fall Green Quad Day. Photos by Amanda Christenson.}

The RORG Team coordinated our annual Giving Tuesday Campaign, which included posts featuring campus partners, RORG’s volunteers, UIUC students, the RORG Student Team, and RORG contributors. The funds raised from this campaign will help provide signage for the rain garden and our ongoing effort to grow the RORG Maintenance Endowment.

RORG’s Fall Tours and Presentations

• September 8: Layne presented on rain gardens, native plants, and water quality at the 2023 State Master Gardener Conference in Peoria. 
• September 28: Maddy provided a tour to students in ENG 177: Engineering Grand Challenges.
• October 23: The RORG Student Team provided a tour to members of the UIUC Student Sustainability Committee.

Fall Blogs:

• Interview with Tony Heath
• Giving Tuesday 2023

In the Rain Garden
Toward the end of the season, we watched our long-lasting Smooth Blue Asters and Orange Coneflowers slowly fade away. Fall colors of yellow, orange, and red fell upon the garden like a fiery blanket. Our Red Chokeberry leaves turned red to match its berries, while our Blue Muffin Viburnum leaves turned a golden yellow. The leaves of our Sycamore and Red Oak started to turn color and fall as well. During some of our last scheduled workdays of the year, volunteers collected seeds from the Asters, Cardinal Flower, and Nodding Onion and cut back some of the taller perennials. In areas slated for design edits in 2024, some of our “good” plants in the “wrong” place were given new homes, allowing some of our volunteers to bring a piece of RORG home with them.

^{RORG’s fall colors were as vibrant as ever this year! Photos by Amanda Christenson.}

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EARLY WINTER

Public Engagement
On an unusually warm early December day, volunteers gathered for RORG’s annual leaf cleanup. During this event, we carefully cleared leaves from select areas of the garden to provide our plants with optimal conditions for their return in the spring. As mentioned in the late winter section, we aim to strike a balance by strategically removing areas of dense Sycamore and Red Oak leaves to promote plant growth, especially where spring ephemerals are located, while retaining a leaf layer in other areas of the rain garden to support habitat for overwintering pollinators. Master Gardeners, Master Naturalists, and students worked together for this workday, the last of 2023!

^{RORG Volunteers gather one last time in 2023 for a cleanup at the garden. Photos by Layne Knoche and Erin Schimenti.}

To talk about how leaves can impact water quality, Eliana spoke to Illinois Extension’s Todd Gleason for the NLRS Podcast about fall leaves and clean streams. Check it out!

In the Rain Garden
A late November snow fell upon the garden, making for a beautiful winter show! The Red Chokeberries, Bicknell’s Sedges, and Prairie Fire Sculptures stand out during these times with the stark color difference from the bright white snow.

Wrap-up

Public Engagement
RORG’s online engagement steadily grew this year, with more than 11,000 website views and nearly 3,000 blog and newsletter reads. Currently, RORG has nearly 700 followers on Facebook, over 750 followers on Instagram, and more than 400 on Twitter. The RORG Team gave seven presentations, reaching over 900 people through virtual, in-person, and hybrid presentations. More than 200 people were given tours of the rain garden during 11 events in 2023, and nearly 50 students and trained volunteers provided stewardship of the garden.

As usual, our biggest event of the year was Mulch Madness, which reached nearly 22,000 online views. We’re excited to continue and build this fun, educational event in the future!

In the Rain Garden
2023 was yet another drought year at the rain garden. For multiple weeks, east-central Illinois, along with much of the rest of the state, faced severe drought conditions. To put 2023 in perspective, as of December 15, the garden received 28.11 inches of precipitation, over 13 inches less than the yearly average of 41.38 inches. Shout out to our CoCoRaHS rain gauge watchers, Katrina Kotowski and Karen Folk for the daily monitoring! It may seem counterintuitive to design a rain garden for dry times, but these variable conditions necessarily factor into RORG’s design. Even so, we did lose some plants to the drought this year. The RORG Team assessed the damage and will be completing repairs and design edits in 2024.

Our 2024 Initiatives

New Plants
Aligned with our adaptive management approach, and as part of the design edits needed following the 2023 drought, we look to broaden and enhance our list of plant species in 2024. Our volunteers have become more comfortable and confident with the plant species already found in the rain garden (always our goal), which allows us to expand.

Interpretive Signage
We oftentimes hear that the rain garden needs signage. The RORG Team wholeheartedly agrees! We’re working with the Student Team, Facilities & Services, and campus code compliance to design interpretive signage that is as innovative as the rain garden. It’s a balance to create something engaging and robust to be appropriate for a college campus.

RORG Maintenance Endowment 
Rain garden maintenance isn’t the flashiest of causes. However, the lack of it can be a significant barrier to building ecological landscapes. At RORG, we are fortunate to have wonderful students and trained community volunteers. We also partner with the university’s Facilities & Services Grounds department, complementing our volunteer efforts. Tasks that go beyond Grounds’ normal job duties require compensation. Therefore, in 2022, Extension established a maintenance endowment to ensure sustainable funding that overcomes barriers to lasting stewardship today and for the years to come. Over the coming year, we plan to continue building the endowment. We’re happy to say that we are a third of the way towards meeting our fund goal!

If RORG and any of the above initiatives fit in with your year-end giving plans, please consider a tax-deductible gift.