Rain Gardens: Beauty with a Purpose
Here’s your chance to make the most of every rainy day. Rather than allowing rainwater runoff to flow down your driveway and into the sewers, why not capture this valuable resource in your own beautiful and functional rain garden? Let the water gradually soak into the soil to benefit your landscaping and recharge the groundwater that serves our wildlife and local ecosystem. These gardens are designed and prepared to absorb (or in some cases even store) excess rainwater, and they contain hardy native plants that can tolerate both dry spells and wet feet.
Also called a bioretention area, the rain garden’s slight saucer-like shape and water-tolerant native plants help precipitation absorb into the ground where it falls. This type of garden is not a retention pond, which can become a breeding area for mosquitoes if the conditions are right. A rain garden is designed to hold water above ground for only a short while, as it filters down into the soil, making it a good landscaping correction for low-lying, often-soggy problem areas in many yards. Installed away from home foundations to avoid damp basements, these planting beds not only work hard to responsibly manage excessive rainfall, but they offer homeowners a wonderful native garden view from right outside their window as well.
Why is this good for the environment?
Rainwater itself usually isn’t the problem, runoff is. When rain runs down streets, sidewalks and other hard surfaces on it’s way to local water sources like ponds and streams, it collects waste and chemicals to take with it, which can harm plants and animals. Too much runoff can also build up rapidly into surges that can cause soil erosion, flooding and other serious damage. Rain gardens offer a earth-friendly, attractive alter-native to piping all your rainwater to the nearest sewer. Carefully designed planting beds help channel the water into the ground where it is absorbed by soil and plants that thrive in normal or soggy conditions. More elaborate rain gardens can also collect this water to be recycled for gardening use.
Please contact your designer at 610 395-6940 for more details, or contact us today.
For more on rain gardens, check out the following sites:
“What is a Rain Garden / Bioretention Area?” by the PA Department of Environmental Protection
“Stormwater Control” by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
“Build a Rain Garden!” by PSU Master Gardeners
Perennials
Shrubs
Trees
For more native plants check outby the PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
