IT WAS RAINING WHEN I VISITED Manchester, fittingly one might say, given its popular image. Fittingly, also, because I was standing in West Gorton Community Park, which includes a lovely rain garden – a sunken area filled with water-loving plants where rain is channelled and left to soak away slowly, rather than bouncing off the roads and pavements then hitting the grids all at once, swamping the already overburdened sewerage system.
The rain garden is one of a number of features in the park designed to manage storm water and help prevent flooding in an area that is prone to it. These other features include swales (imagine ditches planted up with vegetation), timber dams, permeable paving, alder trees, and a mini wildflower meadow where ox-eye daisies sway gently in the breeze.
Not that you are immediately aware that these are rainwater management features. All you really see is a beautiful green space, an oasis of calm in the city.
Manchester City Council commissioned this award-winning park as part of a 10-year plan to regenerate the area. It is also one of the UK’s first research and demonstration project for assessing how Nature-Based Solutions can help combat climate change, and is being closely monitored by scientists at Manchester University.
NONE OF ITS DESIGN
