By Michelle Baker
This week, the local nonprofit One Truckee River celebrated the installation of its newest project at Lake Park in northwest Reno. The grand opening doubled as a community event to educate residents by conducting walking tours to learn more about the native plants and ways to make the most of the limited rainfall the area receives every year.
The river-friendly demonstration garden serves as an example of how homeowners can improve their own gardens so that the Truckee River water quality remains in tip-top shape.
“Our Truckee River is pristine, but we do have a lot of stormwater runoff,” executive director of One Truckee River Iris Jehle-Peppard said. “And so, everything that people can do to keep water onsite, to not over fertilize, to do water conservation, it really helps to increase our protection of our waterways.”
Lake Park, off of Kings Row in northwest Reno, was chosen as the location for this demonstration garden because the lake drains into the Truckee River.
“Eighty-five percent of our water in this region comes from the Truckee River,” Jehle-Peppard said. “And everything that we put into it, Truckee Meadows Water Authority needs to take out.”
The garden was a collaboration of One Truckee River, the City of Reno and Friends of Lake Park and was funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection. To find out more information on the group and creating river-friendly gardens, you can visit www.onetruckeeriver.org.
