Rain Garden Project

11 months ago

Here are photos of the potential rain garden area. There is a park in my neighborhood that is simply an open field. The number of storm drains indicated to me that this park may have a significant amount of water flowing through it. Since the park is surrounded by houses people walk their dogs here, I thought that rain gardens may be a good solution to making the park look nicer and cleaning anything that the water picks up from the houses at the top of the incline. How far should rain gardens be from storm drains?

Featured Answer

Sigrid

11 months ago

In Madison, Wisconsin, I saw a park where the entire depression was filled with prairie natives, many of which (and probably all of the ones in the swale) like or tolerate the occasional soggy soil. I would look up natives for your area that are appropriate for the conditions and recommend a long, oval garden covering both drains. A long oval garden is relatively easy to mow around. It's probably easier to mow around a garden than the mow in that depression.

The natives will do some filtering of the water and they will provide a lot of pollinator and bird-friendly habitat.

My observation while travelling in the Midwest was that different states had very different ideas about encouraging natives in open spaces vs mowing. My take is, if you don't have rain gardens, it's probably local culture, not whether a rain garden will work or not.

Getting prairie natives to grow in former prairie is pretty easy, but outside their natural habitat, even if they are still native to the area, but not common, it can be harder. So you want to research what rain garden plants are common in your area, not whether they are "native". The easiest way is with plugs. The Pollen Nation in New Jersey is a good source for northern east coast natives. Prairie Moon has a good assortment of high-quality plugs for prairie natives. If you're elsewhere, maybe someone else can chime in with a source.

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Comments (8)

gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
11 months ago
last modified: 11 months ago
Couple of issues come to mind
- The purpose of a rain garden is to collect run-off from impermeable surfaces (roofs, driveways, patios, etc), slow it, and direct into a catchment area where it can be absorbed without requiring storm drains, which can become clogged or overflow with heavy rains. This doesn't strike me as a very necessary siting for a rain garden. Rather, the park already appears to have been graded into swales with storm drains that accomplish the same thing
- As this is a public park - not your own property - have you received permission to commit to a project there?
Niarra Coleman
Original Author
11 months ago
The park is still looking for storm drain management although there are many (more than are shown) storm drains in the park. They are interested in the idea of rain gardens, so they must not work all too well. I believe it is also going to be regraded soon.
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Niarra Coleman
Original Author
11 months ago
Thanks! This is helpful input!
Niarra Coleman
Original Author
11 months ago
HW #2: Since this project is being designed for a park, I used Google earth to approximate the measurements of the roofs of the closest 9 houses. The sum approximated areas of the roofs ended up being 7, 525 sq. ft. Then, using the information about the infiltration rate (there's a very slow infiltration rate) from the county's Map website, the approximate space that would be needed for 1 rain garden or multiple small rain gardens would be 2,257.5 sq. ft. I used 30% of the total sum of roofs.
Niarra Coleman
Original Author
11 months ago
last modified: 11 months ago
The original space noted in this thread was too large for a baby master rain gardener like me! But a different area in the park that is more manageable and might solve an issue for park goers is here. The border of the park opens to backyards of people who live around the park. Hopefully this new idea can offer some privacy to neighbors of the park while catching some of the rain off of these steep slopes. The plants that I chose were Milkweed, Purple Coneflower, Fox Sedge, Black eyed Susan, and Joe Pye Weed. These plants are taller to border the park, and I think that the plant colors complement each other. Because of the type of soil here, I think that having 3in depth for this rain garden might go well.
Sigrid
10 months ago
You've picked a great bunch of late-summer blooming plants. I'd add some spring and early summer bloomers. I don't know where you are, so it's hard to advise and, anyway, my house has shade, deep shade and deep, dry shade, so I'm a bit less up on plants that love sun.
Susan Bryan
2 months ago
Those plants look great! If you want to get fancy, some spring bloomers are: Wild Geranium, Swamp Buttercup. Good luck! You are doing good work!