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An innovative stormwater infrastructure project now comes with a warning sign: “No mow.”

This week, Sound Rivers Program Director Clay Barber dodged downpours at West Craven Middle School to deliver a message: “Please no mowing, no trimming” around the perimeter of the regenerative stormwater conveyance system recently installed at the school.

“You have to be really hands-off for the first year for a lot of these projects,” Clay said. “This goes for wetlands, rain gardens, RSCs — anything you have where you’re trying to get plants established, when you’re trying to get as much established in the ground as possible.”

The signs are preventative maintenance, installed with the hope that grounds crews will avoid mowing the areas deliberately planted with native species to anchor berms funneling stormwater into the RSC.

“The signs really benefit in those scenarios when you have people who don’t know about the project working in the area,” Clay said. “That first year period is crucial, and that’s usually when the damage gets done.”

The regenerative stormwater conveyance system is one of several green stormwater infrastructure projects at West Craven Middle School. With funding by the Bosch Community Fund, the Harold Bate Foundation and the Craven Community Foundation, the stormwater projects were constructed by Sound Rivers’ Campus Stormwater Program, which works with local schools across the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico watersheds to address flooding and erosion on campuses and water quality in the waterways accepting stormwater runoff from those campuses.

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We have no photo of Clay’s “No Mow” signs because he was trying to outrun the rain, but we do have this cool video taken mid-storm of West Craven Middle School’s rain garden doing its thing!