A Green Thumb’s Dream
Do you ever loose sleep over water runoff and erosion? Me too. Luckily, there’s a way we can assuage our worries and get plants involved. Enter rain gardens. They look like any other garden, aesthetically pleasing, home to a plethora of pollinators, but they are specially designed to handle rainfall runoff.
When it rains, or when any sort of precipitation hits the earth, the water doesn’t all stay in the place it landed. Some of it is absorbed into the ground and replenishes the groundwater supply while the rest flows downhill and into the nearest body of water. Why is this a problem? Because as the water flows over the land surface, it has the potential to pick up whatever fertilizers, pesticides, bacteria, metals, or petroleum by-products are lying around. This polluted water has now enters our lakes, rivers, and ponds, and that spells trouble for plants and animals, us humans included.
Rain gardens are strategically placed plant communities that catch and clean runoff, reducing pollution and erosion. Acting as bioretention cells, the plants and the growing media take up excess nitrogen and phosphorous from the runoff and absorb much of the water volume. The exact soil types and plant species that make a good rain garden vary depending on geographic location, how much water you want the garden to hold, and how much sun exposure the plot gets, so here are some suggestions for what to plant in different regions of the US. Some plants are more well adapted to moist conditions than others, but every plant is variable. Just because a river birch is known to be highly water tolerant doesn’t mean it can’t drown! Another thing to be aware of is plant age. Be sure to start your garden off with young plants. That way they’ll be able to develop in the uniquely wet conditions of the rain garden so they’ll be used to it by the time they’re fully grown.
This sort of gardening is a kill-three-birds-with-one-stone sort of deal. With a rain garden you get to beautify your space, reduce erosion and pollution, and you get to garden. Sounds like a green thumb’s dream.
Sources
“Rain Garden Design Templates — What Is a Rain Garden?” Rain Garden Design Templates — What Is a Rain Garden? N.p., n.d. Web. 27 June 2016. <http://www.lowimpactdevelopment.org/raingarden_design/whatisaraingarden.htm>.
“Rain Gardens — Plants (Home Lawn and Garden).” Home Lawn and Garden (Penn State Extension). N.p., n.d. Web. 27 June 2016. <http://extension.psu.edu/plants/gardening/eco-friendly/rain-gardens/plants-rain-gardens>.
“Runoff (surface Water Runoff).” Runoff (Surface Water Runoff), USGS Water Science School. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 June 2016. <http://water.usgs.gov/edu/runoff.html>.
