| Create a Rain Garden |
Crafter Michele Beschen, creator of the B Original series, explains how to craft a rain garden for your home.
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By Michele Beschen
Feb. 25, 2008 — "More than 90 percent of the world's total supply of drinking water is groundwater. Once contaminated, groundwater is very difficult and very costly to clean"
— www.h20university.org The temperature gauge outside my Midwest studio reads a brisk 5 degrees with wind chills of minus 20. That, my friends, is cold, and even as the frigid wind blows about my wind chime, which I just now realized I forgot to bring in for the winter, I tell myself that spring and the warm, sunny days that accompany it will be arriving any day now to thaw out the mounds of snow that sit atop my garden beds. The one garden bed I'm most excited to see emerge is the rain garden we installed last summer. Rain gardens are a growing trend for home and business landscapes. They have certainly enhanced the beauty of my yard, while at the same time providing an interesting topic of conversation for all my visitors. Quite simply, they're beautiful, specialized gardens designed to put water in its place. They're strategically placed in a yard to infiltrate storm-water runoff from impervious surfaces such as rooftops, driveways and parking lots. This helps minimize water flow and water-quality issues and increases the amount of water that filters into the ground. Rain gardens can cut down on the amount of pollution that reaches creeks and streams by as much as 30 percent. As a gardener, I think this is a beautiful thing all the way around! Assess your home or business and determine a potential site for a rain garden by observing a source of runoff and in which direction the water flows. This type of garden is generally placed downhill from the source, usually off of one of your downspouts, and at least 10 feet away from a structure that has a basement. To determine the size of your rain garden, measure the square footage of your impervious surface and multiply that by 10 percent. For instance, if the surface area of your rooftop is 600 square feet, you'll build a rain garden that is 60 square feet in size. Do a soil investigation to ensure that your soil percolates water at an adequate rate. This can be as simple as digging a hole, filling it with water and monitoring the rate at which it disperses. If the water is still standing after several hours, it's not a good site for a rain garden without making the proper amendments to the soil matrix. Be sure to check for all utilities before digging, and you're ready to build. Dig a shallow depression with a flat, bottom surface that is roughly six to eight inches deep. You'll fill that back in with a soil mixture that consists of 60 percent sand, 20 percent topsoil and 20 percent compost. You're then ready to fill it with plants that are native to your local ecosystem. Native plants will establish the necessary root system to enhance proper infiltration. Place one plant every one, to one-and-a-half square feet. Water immediately after planting and continue to water at a rate of at least an inch of water per week (unless rain does the job for you) until your plants are established. You should not have to water your rain garden once the plants are established, and minimal weeding and thinning will be about as much maintenance as this garden needs. There are limitless design possibilities with your rain garden and a number of wonderful resources are available for reference online. I must warn you though that once the rain bug bites, you'll be looking to get your feet wet in other ways. Installing a rain barrel is another easy, ever-efficient way to use rainwater. With proper diversion, they can be installed to work with the same downspout that feeds your rain garden. For something a bit more on the decorative side, you can experiment with creating your own rain chains. They're a beautiful alternative to the drab, dreary downspout and can be created by simply wrapping 1/4 inch of copper tubing around a two-inch piece of PVC pipe. Cut coil into rings and link together. Then attach with pipe hooks and "S" hooks directly to your gutter where your downspout would attach. You will still need to create a basin or diversion at the bottom of your chain to collect and divert the rainwater away from your building, but this too can be another beautiful feature for your yard. Start planning now so that when those warm, spring showers begin to fall, you'll "b. prepared" to take advantage of every drop! (Michele Beschen is creator of the B Original series for the DIY Network. Contact her at www.couragetocreate.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.) | Get DIY On Your TV. Just follow the instructions to see if DIY Network is available through your cable or satellite provider. |
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