The Cotuit Library garden during excavation earlier this spring. Photo by April Wobst/APCC
While the doors have remained closed, outside, construction of a new garden has been underway at the Cotuit Library. Like all non-essential businesses and institutions, the library has been closed since March; but while everything else in society seems to have slowed down, construction has been able to proceed at pace.
Located in the adjacent park, the garden will collect and clean rainwater from the library parking lot and a portion of the library roof.
This is no ordinary garden – it is something called a bioretention area, very similar to the low-tech rain gardens that residents can build in their yards. This filtering “garden” is one of a series of nature-based stormwater treatment systems being constructed in the Three Bays watershed by the town of Barnstable, in partnership with the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, Horsley Witten Group, and in the case of this garden project, the Cotuit Library and village community.