The Coastal Federation also has worked with the city and North Carolina State to install a rain
garden at Bradley Creek Elementary School off Greenville Loop Road.
Although the two rain gardens at Art
Padilla and Laura Lunsford’s Wrightsville
Beach home feature glass instead of
plants, the effect is the same. Stormwater
is retained and drained before it runs off
into Banks Channel and the Lollipop.
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“The school is on 17 acres of land,” Skrabal says. “The headwater to Hewletts Creek is right there.
Everything was designed to go straight into the top of the creek. It was the worst possible scenario.
We put a wetland in the center, a swale, two rain gardens. It’s full of plants that flower at different
times. They take classes out and use it as a living laboratory.”
Not all rain gardens need plants to be effective or to look beautiful. Art Padilla and Laura
Lunsford got creative in finding a way to drain the stormwater off their home at Palmetto Drive and
keep it out of Banks Channel and the Lollipop.
“We needed to do something with the water that comes off the roof,” Padilla says. “Someone
suggested a pond with fish, but I didn’t want to do that. I came up with the idea of doing a dry
pond with rocks.”
He ran the idea by Will Hooker, a friend who is a landscape architect and N.C. State professor.
“Will said, ‘Why don’t we make it look like a wet pond with glass?’” Padilla says. “We dug a
great big hole, then we lined it with landscape cloth to keep weeds out. Then we put the glass on
top of that. It’s really amazing when the water comes off the roof. It’s mesmerizing to look at it.
It’s a garden feature that looks cool, and it keeps water out of the sound. And I don’t have to
worry about a koi pond and eagles landing in it and eating them.”
Padilla told Skrabal about his creations (he has two), and she had to check it out.
“He’s got a very cool rain garden,” Skrabal says.
“The idea is exactly the same. He directs his
downspout to an area he dug out and put
sand at the bottom and then glass, which is
permeable. The effect is exactly what we
would do with plants. He’s just doing it
in an artistic way.”
With plants or without, the idea is
the same.
“The message always is, let’s
put in rain gardens and turn
downspouts and stop
sending stormwater to
Lees Cut and Motts
Channel and Banks
Channel,” she
says.
PHOTO BY ALLISON POTTER