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| THE CASUAL GARDENER, Shawna Coronado CONSERVATION: How A “Rain Garden” Is Like My Cowlick! = = = = = = = = = Dear Casual Gardener, What the heck is a “Rain Garden”? Signed, Curious on Country Ridge Road = = = = = = = = = = Dear Curious, This is a timely question as we are entering a typical Fall rainy season. It is a good time to get a Rain Garden started, with the intention of completing the process in the Spring. A “Rain Garden” is a man-made depression in the ground. Rain gardens are suitable for any land use situation, residential, commercial and industrial. It is used as a way to improve water quality while beautifying your landscape. A Rain Garden forms a “bioretention area” by collecting water runoff, storing it, than permitting it to be filtered through and slowly absorbed by the soil. The idea is abased on the hydrologic function of forest habitat in which the forest produces a spongy litter layer that soaks up water and allows it to slowly penetrate the soil layer. A nutrient filtering process takes place as the water comes in contact with the soil and the roots of the trees, shrubs and vegetation in the area. This process accounts for the improved water quality. The first flush of rain water is ponded in the depression of the rain garden, and contains the highest concentration of materials washed off impervious surfaces such as roofs, roads and parking lots. We suburban homeowners – or anyone for that matter – can creatively recycle all the wasted water which runs off our roofs and landscapes this way. Usually the water gets shuttled to the drain and eventually a river, so it is not recycled into our water system – it is sent off to the ocean. It is much better if we are able to replace the water to the water table after we “filter” it through a Rain Garden. It helps keep our local environment healthier. By creating a “Rain Garden” you are truly contributing to the environment in a positive way. PLUS it allows some people to grow beautiful wetland perennials – a magnificent contribution to your landscape. Choosing the right place for your rain garden is important. A rain garden is a system of retention pond area, soil, plants and mulch that will retain water and soak it up instead of letting it run off of your property (even though your “pond” will be dry most of the time). So the most basic things are the “pond,” or depression into which water will flow, and the soils that will absorb the water. Each Rain Garden site should be considered unique. Microclimates (light, temperature and wind), and the size of the drainage area will influence the size of the rain garden and plant selection process. Why is a Rain Garden like my cowlick? It has taken me 20 years, but I have finally learned to work with my cowlick – it’s an obnoxious upstart in the middle of my forehead. By working against the cowlick I could never get it to perform right. It was a daily fight in front of the mirror with hair gel and hairspray. At the end of the whole experience my hair looked like a greased down waterpark slide with a lovely arching hump frozen like cement at the top of my forehead. By working with my cowlick I learned it’s a lot easier to manage the cowlick predicament. It’s the same with Rain Gardens if you have a difficult wet spot on your property; it’s easier to work with WHAT YOU HAVE. Go with the flow! An existing wet spot is the perfect area to “rebuild” and create a Rain Garden. It’s the spot that naturally accepts a lot of rain water run-off, so fighting against this location and having the water run-off elsewhere might be an unending battle. My suggestion if you have an existing wet area in your yard, is to build a Rain Garden on top of the spot and redirect the water from your roof, home and driveway to the location. The base layer of a Rain Garden should be a reservoir of gravel at the bottom of the garden bed. You can also add tiles or an under-drain that leads to another area. This will prevent a waterlogged rain garden. The idea is to create a living sponge of soil, plants, roots and mulch, not a soggy bog. Additional components of a Rain Garden include a base mulch/organic layer. It provides for the decomposition of organic material, and also plays an important role in the removal of metals. Shredded hardwood mulch is the preferred choice, since it allows for maximum surface area for binding and resists flotation/wash-out. Mix in planting soil. The best mix is probably organic matter in the form of leaf mulch (20%) blended into a sandy soil (50%) with and about 30% top soil. The planting soil mixture provides a source of water and nutrients for the plants to sustain growth. A planting design should include species that tolerate extremes. My suggestion is to use native species. You can creatively plant them to be “naturalistic” in design or combine them with grasses and non-native perennials which might be more florific. There will be periods of water inundation and very dry periods, so plant selections must keep this in mind. Most river bank plant species will do well in rain gardens. The choice of species could include plants that mimic forest habitat and have an aesthetic landscape value such as flowers, berries, interesting leaves or bark. Groundcovers, perennials shrubs and trees should be incorporated into the planting design as well. So go out there and work on that cowlick in your yard - - fix it by building a Rain Garden!! For further information on Native Plants and Rain Gardens and how to build them, please contact Jim Kleinwachter of Conservation @ Home, a division of The Conservation Foundation (http://www. theconservationfoundation.org/), at 630-553-0687 x 302. Another good online resource for Rain Garden building with very detailed information is www.raingardens.org. Please send your gardening questions for Shawna Coronado, The Casual Gardener to dearshawna@thecasualgardener.com or The Casual Gardener, P.O. Box 358, Warrenville, IL 60555. www.thecasualgardener.com |
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