New Ideas CityHello Museum

Save the Swales

Part of the Street Program

Bioswales are landscape elements designed to remove silt and pollution from surface runoff water. Coming off the successful installation of a community-built bioswale on Catherine Slip last spring, Save the Swales is working to build more of them on the Lower East Side this year. For IDEAS CITY, we will expose the public to these invisible opportunities for green infrastructure by enhancing a street tree bed with soil amendments and specialized plantings so that it can become a mini-bioswale and absorb more storm water. Until recently, street tree beds were an invisible part of the city to be trampled, peed, and pooped on, but with a simple intervention, they can be turned into community assets.