Rain-irrigated LIVING air conditioners, shading and cooling neighborhood streets by 38˚F (21˚C)!
In this video, Brad Lancaster shows how native food-bearing trees and understory vegetation planted within or beside passive rain- and stormwater-harvesting rain gardens is able to shade and cool the neighborhood street by over 38˚F or 21˚C!
It is not just the shade that cools. It is also the cooling effect of the passively harvested water that cycles through the life of the soil-carbon sponge.
See image and link below for more.
For more on the soil-carbon sponge, its cooling effect, and other benefits see here.
This is also a great flood-control system in wet times; mitigates drought in dry times; and improves our air, mood, and wildlife habitat all the time.
We are able to harvest over one million gallons of street runoff per mile per year from our neighborhood streets by directing that water to sufficiently sized rain gardens, rather than the storm drain!
See here for another video on some of the ways we do so.
This video was filmed September 2022 in the Dunbar/Spring Neighborhood of Tucson, AZ
For more videos that expand on this one subscribe to Brad Lancaster’s YouTube channel at:
https://www.youtube.com/c/HarvestingRainwater?sub_confirmation=1
See the new, full-color, revised editions of Brad’s award-winning books
– available a deep discount, direct from Brad:
Volume 1
This is the book to show you the way to harvest your many free on-site waters for maximum benefit!
Volume 2
This book gives you step-by-step instructions on how to passively harvest water in many different contexts and many different ways within the soil and its life via earthworks or rain gardens.