What is a bioswale? 
A closer look at the O'Connor park bioswale:
When you first arrive at O’Connor park, the first thing you notice is the parking lot. It’s not paved like a normal parking lot, it is covered in beautiful patterned stone. Now in addition to being aesthetically pleasing, this parking lot is also much better for the surrounding environment due to the fact that this special permeable stone paving allows water to filter down naturally into the water table. A portion of the parking lot water runoff is collected in the bioswale in the middle and then re-directed toward the wetland to assist its sustainability. This kind of permeable parking lot greatly reduces stormwater runoff, harvests rainwater and keeps it on site where it can benefit the ecosystem within the park. The innovative bioswale and permeable pavement system collects urban runoff and filters out pollutants so cleaner water flows into Mullet Creek, the Credit River and Lake Ontario, our drinking water source for the Greater Golden Horseshoe.
Bioswales achieve the same goals as rain gardens by slowing and filtering stormwater, but are designed to manage a specified amount of runoff from a large impervious area, such as a parking lot or roadway. Because they need to accommodate greater quantities of stormwater, they often require use of engineered soils and are deeper than rain gardens. They are also linear systems that are greater in length than width. Like rain gardens, they are vegetated with plants that can withstand both heavy watering and drought.
In order to log this earthcache, please email me the answers to the following questions:
1. Estimate the length and width of the bioretention cell (bioswale) in the parking lot. Around the perimeter of the bioretention cell is a small retaining curb, with 30 cm cut-outs at 5 m intervals. What do you think this allows for? Do you think the parking lot has been graded a certain way, and if so, why?
2. Can any types of soils and plants be used in bioswale? Why or why not?
3. Using the cache page, and what you see on-site, what do you feel is the biggest benefit of a bioswale?
4. Please proceed to the sign at 43 33.185, -079 44.447, and tell me the name on the sign and when this path was named?
Congratulations to JS&SV on the FTF!