GIVE
GIVE

Rain Gardens

Our Cost-Sharing Programs Protect Your Home and The River

We’ll share the cost to install an eligible rain garden on your property to keep pollution out of the Elizabeth River. Together we’ll make the river cleaner and your yard beautiful. 

What A Rain Garden Will Do

Rain gardens use amended soil and native plants to slow, absorb and filter polluted runoff before it ever reaches the river.

  • Reduce pollution
  • Help prevent algae blooms
  • Prevents standing stormwater and mosquito breeding
  • Attracts butterflies, hummingbirds and other wildlife

What We’ll Do

  • Free site assessment to determine if your site is suitable for a rain garden project 
  • Project Design – $100 cost applied to total cost share after installation
  • cost share “up to (50%/75%) to a maximum of ($2,000/$3,500)
  • Elizabeth River Project staff will provide a long-term maintenance plan for the project

How to Apply

Due to high demand, our waitlists for Elizabeth River Project managed or installed projects are currently closed for 2025 projects. We will reopen waitlists this coming fall for 2026 projects. Be sure to follow us on Facebook or Instagram, or join our exclusive River Star Homes Facebook group to get notifications about waitlist openings and upcoming DIY Landscape Design workshops!
 
If you are doing a DIY project or are ready to install a project with another contractor, you may still be eligible to receive a reimbursement for your project through the cost share program without waiting for the next sign up period. To learn more about this process, please reach out to Mandi Pesha, River Star Communications Specialist at mpesha@elizabethriver.org.

My garden is looking great. I’m really happy with all the plants – the selection, the placement. Bravo! On to clean water.

Lynn Gilbert
River Star Home

Are you a River Star Home?(Required)

Thanks to our partners!

Our Rain Garden cost-sharing program is only made possible through funding generous support from our partners and the hundreds of Elizabeth River Project members and donors.

  • National Fish and Wildlife Foundation – Chesapeake Bay Innovative Nutrient and Sediment Reduction Grant
  • Chesapeake Bay Small Watershed Grant 
  • City of Norfolk
  • City of Chesapeake
  • City of Virginia Beach
Rain Garden - After