What Rain Gardens Can Do

Last week, I was busy installing a new rain garden for a client in South Orange, NJ.  The project was developed to address how the backyard gets swamped after rainstorms.  

The image below shows how the backyard looked before we redesigned it to include a rain garden.

The image above shows the pre-construction outline (in orange) of where the rain garden will go.

Rain gardens come in many different shapes and forms.  A common approach is to have rainwater run into them and then stop until the water infiltrates into the ground.  But that’s really only one way to make them.

When I work with a client, I ask two really important questions: 1. How can the rain garden perform to address the problems, and 2. How can the rain garden enhance the quality of the yard?

For this project, the answer for the first question was to create a rain garden with a bioswale feature.  A bioswale allows for storm water to run through the garden versus having it sit and infiltrate.  

We started building the rain garden by digging a 3-foot deep by 2-foot wide trench that spans the entire backyard.  

Because the backyard is narrow, we used hand tools to dig the trench.

Then we used peat moss, stone and mushroom soil to create a sponge that sits at the bottom of the trench.  We wrapped the sponge with landscape fabric to allow water, but not sediment, to go in.  The fabric will allow the sponge to function for years to come.   

After the sponge was installed, we put mushroom soil and river rock on top, and then planted around it.  The plants we selected are all shade tolerant and can manage wet areas.   

We selected native perennials for the rain garden to add massive color and texture to the space.

Just a few days after we were finished, we got a big storm.  I snapped the image below showing the rain garden in action.  

With the new rain garden, the backyard has been transformed into a place of discovery that is just as beautiful when it’s cloudy as it is during sunny, dry days.