Plants and Soils of the Walnut Wetlands

New Addition: People and the Walnut Wetlands, an Oral History Project

Visitors: Use the links above to learn more about specific aspects of the Walnut Wetlands.

Overview map of the Walnut Wetlands area.

Walnut Creek Wetlands

The Walnut Creek Wetlands lie near the Rochester Heights neighborhood in southeast Raleigh, about three miles downstream from the lake Raleigh basin. The Creek and its adjoining waters on both sides of Garner Road were designated a palustrine-forested-seasonally flooded wetland in 1995 by the National Wetlands Inventory (Amin Davis, 1997).

What are Wetlands?

Wetlands are places with growing plants that have water near the surface or close below the surface for some part of the year. Small wetlands can form when the roots of fallen trees make holes in the soil that fill with water. Medium sized wetlands occur when creeks are dammed up. Large size wetlands are areas like large ponds or lakes.

Small wetland (left); medium wetland (right).

< Large Wetland

Right here inside the beltline in Southeast Raleigh, along Walnut Creek, we have several beautiful wetland areas that keep our drinking water clean, produce food and habitat for wildlife and provide natural and relaxing places for recreation.

Neighborhood Connection:

The wetlands along Walnut Creek are very close to houses, churches and stores where people live and work. It is important that these wetlands stay healthy and free of trash so they can fulfill their role of storing floodwaters and filtering runoff from city streets. Rochester Heights lies just south of Walnut Creek. The floodplain of the creek extends into this neighborhood and many others along the Walnut Creek Watershed. Large amounts of water collects on city streets and flows into the wetland through large ditches like this one near Rochester Heights.

The Rochester Heights neighborhood (left) and one of its water drainage ditches (right).

How to use this site:

This site contains information about the soils, vegetation, and other characteristics of the Walnut Wetlands and other wetlands in North Carolina. To learn more about these things, use the links at the top of this web page to see additional pages. To get your bearings, the map at the top of this page offers an overview of the Walnut Wetlands site.