Golden opportunity

After 50 years of marriage and four grown kids, most couples are done with procreating. Not Bob and Debby Wolk. They recently gave birth to 11 baby rain gardens, one for every yard on their southwest Minneapolis block.

The Wolks hatched the plan earlier this year. Their 50th anniversary was a few months away, and they were trying to come up with a fun way to celebrate it. They wanted a party, but nothing formal. They also wanted something interactive, so that their friends from different circles could mingle. And, given the faltering economy, they wanted to do something that was socially useful as well as festive.

They looked for group volunteer opportunities on a website (www.handsontwincities.org), but most were on Saturdays, which would keep some of the Wolks' synagogue friends from taking part. "So we had to find our own Sunday thing," Debby said.

The Wolks are both big on gardening (she's a master gardener; he's on the board of Metro Blooms, a nonprofit that promotes urban gardening), so Bob asked a Metro Blooms colleague if she had any ideas. "She suggested doing a rain garden in a public space," he said. But which one, the couple pondered? And who would maintain it?

Then Debby had a brainstorm: "Why not give a rain garden to all our neighbors?"

The Wolks had already installed a rain garden on their own property several years earlier. They figured the more rain gardens in their neighborhood, the less runoff into nearby Minnehaha Creek, and the less algae and pollution in the city's chain of lakes.

"This is a special block," Debby said. While most homes in the surrounding neighborhood are two-stories, built in the 1920s and '30s, with small garages in the back, the Wolks' block was developed much later. "It was the swamp basin to the creek. This lot [the Wolks'] finally got dredged and drained in the late '40s," she said. By then, the housing norm was ramblers with lots of roof, garages in front and big concrete driveways sloping to the street, a recipe for runoff.

Intriguing invitation

In late March, the Wolks invited everyone on their block to a mysterious gathering at their home. "Bob's invitation was intriguing; it just said we'd like to talk to you about something," Debby recalled.

"And we'll have wine," Bob added.

Everyone came. "Then I stood up and said, 'We would like to give you a gift in honor of our 50th anniversary -- a rain garden.' There was this gasp. I said, 'You don't have to answer right away.'"

Most of the neighbors accepted enthusiastically that same night. But there were a few holdouts.

Luke Johnson, who lives at the opposite end of the block, was one. "I had some initial reservations," he said. "I'm not here a lot in the summer. I go up north. My concern was maintenance. I'm just not a gardener. It's not an interest of mine. And I was concerned about water usage."

But within two weeks, Johnson capitulated. "I know the Wolks a little bit, and they're really wonderful people," he said. "If they want to do that, I want to participate."

With all the neighbors now on board, the Wolks, working with Metro Blooms, hired a landscape architect to draw up three rain-garden templates and a list of native plants. Craig Stark, owner of Ecoscapes Sustainable Landscaping, met with individual homeowners to tweak the plans according to their site and their plant preferences.

Some, like Vicki Silberman, who lives across the street from the Wolks, gave Stark a lot of input. "When he asked, 'How big?' I said, 'Big.' I figured with our big yard it would look more balanced," she said. And she replaced one plant that she didn't like with another that she did.

Johnson, on the other hand, "didn't pay much attention to the templates. I went with what they suggested," he said. Even now, he doesn't know what plants he's growing. "What's in there, I couldn't tell you." Still, he's doing his best to keep them watered, he said.

In late May, Stark brought a backhoe and prepared the sites. The City of Minneapolis Parks Department delivered loads of wood chips for mulch. And finally, on May 31, about 150 of the Wolks' friends, relatives and neighbors gathered for a garden installation/block party. Each guest was assigned a garden to work on, with a master gardener as team leader. There was an art table for the kids, an ice-cream truck and a bluegrass band. And once the planting was done, guests danced in the street, which had been blocked off for the occasion. "We had a ball," Debby said.

"It was really fun," Silberman agreed. "And it was neat to be part of the whole thing, to feel like you're part of the solution."

Now, a little more than two months later, most of the gardens are thriving, although one appeared to be struggling. "It has very poor soil," Bob said. "Debby and I are going to dig it up and put in more topsoil. I want it to be right."

But mostly the Wolks are delighted with their new offspring -- and the people tending them.

"I'm so proud of my neighbors," Bob said. "A lot of them are not gardeners, but they're taking such good care of the gardens, watering and weeding. It's really great."

Kim Palmer • 612-673-4784

YOU CAN DO IT, TOO

For primer on how to start a rain garden and a guide to some of the best rain garden plants, go to www.startribune.com/homegarden.