When Life Gives You Bad Drainage, Grow a Rain Garden

Practical (aka Lazy Mary) Water Gardening

In one area of my yard,I don't need to collect rainwater, it collects itself... The area along the driveway can hold water near the surface for a week.You need boots to walk across it. it slowly dries out. until the next rain.It seemed unusable. So i planted a Rain Garden.

Bog plants, marginal pond plants, many perennial flowering plants are happy with wet and dry feet,and are available in most zones.

Pull out the sod and have the inner part of your area gradually lower than the outer areas unless it has a natural dip towards the center. you can dig out more soil in some places and not others to make valleys. I topped mine with pea gravel. Water looks pretty on top of it.

Birds drink and splash in there after a heavy rain. Another chunk of eco-unfriendly lawn area is now a habitat for butterflies, dragonflies, and the area around it seems to be less saturated. Water doesn't run into the stormwater drain like it used to. No maintenance needed yet. And my worms apparently haven't drowned. Details and pix will eventually be on my blog.

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http://www.eyecandee.com/gardening/xeriscapist.htm
"In the Garden, my soul is sunshine"

I have a rain garden in the planning stage for my front yard, it will have to wait until the fall when I can get back out there on a regular basis and we actually get some rain so I can get a shovel in the black clay.

Rain gardens are not just for bad drainage. So much land is being covered up by buildings, streets, parking lots and sidewalks that don't let rain water soak into the soil. That decreases the underground watertable which means that creeks have excessive flow during heavy rain falls and dry up very quickly when the rain stops.

The excess flow of rainwater into the storm sewers instead of the soil also overloads the waste management systems because of all the everyday chemicals that the rainwater washes into the sewers.

The soil acts as a filter as the rain soaks in, resulting in cleaner water in the streams and rivers.

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"Blossom by blossom the spring begins."
Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909)

"A little Madness in the spring, is wholesome even for the King."
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)