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Post Office’s ‘rain garden’ boosts sustainability

Landscape architect Tom Benjamin discusses the “rain garden” being planted at the Hinsdale, NH, Post Office Sept. 17. Photo: Battleboro Reformer
Landscape architect Tom Benjamin discusses the “rain garden” being planted at the Hinsdale, NH, Post Office Sept. 17. Photo: Battleboro Reformer

The Hinsdale, NH, Post Office has added a “rain garden” to reduce stormwater pollution and promote environmental sustainability.

The garden includes native grasses and flowering perennials that will help filter stormwater after it flows off the Post Office’s roof.

“Previously, all that water would just fall on this semi-compacted gravel driveway and just kind of flow towards the river and not be treated,” Tom Benjamin, a landscape designer who worked on the project, told the Battleboro Reformer recently.

Postmaster Cindy Mason also worked with USPS Environmental Specialist Julie Theroux, who said the project “will promote the usefulness of these rain gardens to putting precious rainwater back into the environment.”

The Hinsdale garden is part of the Postal Service’s broader efforts to become more environmentally sustainable. Similar projects have been done at other facilities, including the Pittsburgh P&DC and the Colvin-Elmwood Post Office in Syracuse, NY.

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