On the former sites of vacant Detroit homes, University of Michigan researchers and their partners have built innovative gardens that help manage stormwater while removing neighborhood blight.
The four new “bioretention gardens” are designed to capture and hold stormwater in a subsurface layer of gravel while beautifying the Cody Rouge area on Detroit’s west side. The just-completed gardens are expected to achieve an average annual stormwater volume reduction of 300,000 gallons per site, for a total of 1.2 million gallons, and should help reduce street flooding during big storms.