Rain Garden Design For Homeowners
The online guides will tell you to locate a rain garden 10 feet from your house and at a natural low spot.
Rain garden design for homeowners. Essentially you dig a basin plant some water tolerant plants mulch it in well and redirect your downspouts to the hole. Giant beds of mulch with sparse plants are not beautiful. Areas near downspouts are a logical choice for hosting a rain garden design.
Soak up the rain. Rain gardens including small homeowner and community gardens are an important tool for watershed conservation and preservation. Rain gardens work by capturing holding and infiltrating rainwater runoff on individual sites.
In general 100 to 300 square feet is a practical size for homeowner designed rain gardens. The best place to locate a rain garden is down slope at least 10 feet away from your home s foundation. More than a dozen rain garden designs can easily be found on the internet.
Planted with grasses and flowering perennials rain gardens can be a cost effective and beautiful way to reduce runoff from your property. Rain gardens are a great way to reduce stormwater volume and improve water quality and the more rain gardens there are the more volume is decreased and quality im proves. A small rain garden is better than nothing but you should plan on a garden at least 150 square feet in order to include an interesting variety of plants that can process the runoff associated with your landscape.
Choose a natural rounded shape for your rain garden like an oval teardrop or kidney shape. Rain gardens are relatively cheap and are simple to design and install. Do not place the rain garden directly over a septic system.
A rain garden is a depressed area in the landscape that collects rain water from a roof driveway or street and allows it to soak into the ground. To help decide where to put a rain garden consider these points. Rain gardens prevent pollution from soaking in this impure run off water instead of letting it flow into streams and rivers.