Aglines
agriculture * food * energy * environment
How to make a rain garden
Author: Robert24 Nov
From our friends at Country Living Association:
Have you ever watched your gutter’s gush during a heavy rain? You can ease the stress by channeling your roofs runoff into a rain garden, which is like a miniature wetland. These beautiful, moist landscapes are rich with native wildflowers, grasses, birds, reptiles and dragonflies. The densely rooted native plants capture, filter, store and slowly release stormwater. Nutrients such as nitrates and phosphates that otherwise would run off and pollute streams are also trapped. Rain gardens can help draining and flooding problems and bring wildlife to your landscape.
Creating a rain garden is not complicated. Follow these steps:
- Determine the size. The rain garden should be about one-third the size of your roof’s square footage.
- Choose a spot at least 10 feet from your house and down slope from your downspout.
- Before digging, make sure you won’t hit any utility lines.
- Adjust the square-footage mesasurements to your roofs size, but use the following as a guide: for a 200 square-foot roof, dig a shallow depression 6 to 8 inches deep and 10-feet-by-7-feet wide. Slope the sides toward the center.
- Make sure the overflow from the depression runs away from your house.
- Direct runoff from your downspout to your rain garden depression. Either dig a shallow channel or pipe a runoff through a buried 4 inch black-plastic drainpipe.
- Now you are ready to plant and design the layout of your garden. Check out Grow Native for ideas about what to plant where.
- Keep a layer of untreated shredded hardwood mulch on the soil around the plants to conserve moisture and stay manicured.
- Water your plants every other day for the first few weeks or until they show growth.
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