Gardening With Rain

Early Beginnings

• Gardening with rain is a relatively new concept, with its early beginnings in Maryland in 1990. Dick Brinker, a housing developer, designed a rain garden for each house in the Somerset residential subdivision. His goal of channeling storm-water runoff into rain gardens instead of using traditional retention ponds exceeded expectations and spearheaded other low-impact development projects for storm-water management. The Somerset community benefited from the ecologically sound practice of rain gardening, and the homeowners benefited from their landscape designs.

Misconceptions

• A rain garden is not a bog garden. In a rain garden, water soaks into the ground between rainfalls without leaving patches of standing water. Mosquitoes require at least a week to lay and hatch their eggs, and their larvae require standing water to mature. Water in a rain garden should stand no longer than 24 hours before it drains into the ground after a rainstorm. Rain gardens do not form retention ponds, but form detention areas that prevent storm water from eroding landscapes.

Suitable Sites

• Landscape areas sited close to impervious surfaces are usually ideal for gardening with rain. Places where water falls from roofs, flows from downspouts or runs off driveways and sidewalks are natural areas of irrigation. Adding a raised berm at the base of a downhill slope helps retain water in a rain garden. Placing stones around the berm adds an extra measure of protection against erosion. Installing rain gardens at least 10 feet from a home's foundation protects the foundation from excess moisture.

Suitable Plants

• Plants that can sustain rain-garden conditions of temporary flooding, several hours of water absorption into the soil and periods of drought between rainfalls are ones to select for garden design. Beautyberry, swamp azalea and bottlebrush buckeye are good choices of native shrubs for rain gardens. Swamp hibiscus, flag irises and native ferns are some perennial plants to choose. Not all plants are adapted for all regions of the country. University extension offices in each county have lists of suitable plants for each region.