Rain Gardens

Rain Gardens are landscape features that take advantage of periodic rains that would otherwise produce flooding. From the Rain Gardens of West Michigan site:

What is a rain garden?

A rain garden is an attractive landscaping feature planted with perennial native plants. It is a bowl-shaped garden, designed to absorb stormwater run-off from impervious surfaces such as roofs and parking lots.

Rain gardens can be small, formal, home-owner style gardens, large complex bioretention gardens, or anywhere in between.

There's a nice example by the Ann Arbor YMCA (sorry, no photos, anyone?) and here's a link to a photo on flickr of a planned rain garden site showing what sort of poor drainage is idea for planting something other than grass.

In my own neighborhood only a few blocks away (on Gardener between Packard and Burns Park) there's a rain garden that takes in water through underground pipes from roof drainage. All sorts of lovely flowers including black-eyed susans and irises bloom there. There's a small rain garden photo series from Native Plant Nursery LLC.

(more photos needed)

Comments

[steven davies]

Rain Gardens are wonderful and they will be a great addition to my home.