Joliet Job Corps Center students always are willing to help.

And they’ll do the work even if it means a lot of hard work on a cool fall day in an overgrown garden populated by spiders and filled with weeds.

On a recent Thursday morning, a group of students went to the city of Joliet’s Rain Garden, a small plot of native plants at 900 Westwood Ave. Installed in 2010 in an older neighborhood on the city’s near west side, the garden is in a low-lying area that collects and holds rain water for short periods of time. It features plants with deep root structures that improve the absorption of storm water on site.

The garden filters and cleans storm water from approximately 12 city blocks before being discharged to the nearby Des Plaines River. In addition to removing dirt, debris and road salt, the site also reduces the volume of storm water discharge that previously contributed to local flooding problems.

Some of the students had been there before. In September, a group of them went to the garden for the first time to begin clearing the tall weeds that choked the area. They made a good dent in the work that day, but more needed to be done, so they returned in October, working once again with Gini Lester and Fran Beck of Will County Wild Ones, an environmentally conscious group that is interested in native plants.

After working for several hours on the latest trip, the students bagged up all of the landscape debris. Then they were ready for a stop at the local Steak and Shake restaurant for a much-deserved lunch.