Rain Gardens: Not What You Think
Ever heard of a rain garden? They're gradually becoming more common, so you may be familiar with the term. When I first heard “rain garden” mentioned, I imagined a swampy wetland collecting stagnant water and mosquitoes and frogs, but that's not a rain garden.
A rain garden is just a shallow depression in the earth planted with native plants; after a rainfall it may have standing water for up to two days, but no longer. (In other words, it won't harbor mosquitoes.) If you see such a garden when rain hasn't fallen in the last forty-eight hours, you just notice a lovely native plant garden.
So if it looks like any other garden, what's the point of going to the trouble to plant a rain garden? There are several considerations that make a rain garden worth your time.
For one thing, rain gardens help to reduce rain runoff. In a natural area (one that hasn't been disturbed by human activity like constructing roads and buildings) where precipitation falls on vegetation or the soil, 10% of the water runs over the surface of the ground down to waterways and 50% lies on the ground until it seeps into the soil and eventually down to the aquifer. The rest, of course, evaporates or transpires into the atmosphere through the leaves of plants,
In a “developed” area, where most of the soil has been covered by impervious material (buildings, roads, sidewalks, parking lots, driveways, etc.), 55% of rainwater runs off to waterways and only 15% seeps into the ground. As more and more land is taken from nature to accommodate our growing population, we can expect the volume of runoff to increase.
Increased runoff suddenly entering streams and rivers after a heavy rainfall carries increased risk of flooding. We are well aware of the damage caused to human habitat and enterprise by flooding, but natural areas are also affected. Flooding tears away vegetation along streams and erodes their banks, destroying wildlife habitat.
Flooding always involves erosion of soil, but erosion occurs without flooding every time rain falls on slopes with bare soil. And construction of buildings and roads leaves soil bare for months. Eroded soil is carried to waterways or storm sewers and finally to the sea, lost to us forever. Sediment is a major pollutant in natural areas and in cities. In streams it changes the water flow, muddies water so animals can't find food, and destroys the little organisms at the bottom of the food chain, resulting in the population decline of fish and other wild animals. In cities, sediment can clog storm sewers and must be removed in water treatment plants before water is suitable for human consumption.
Other pollutants added to the soil by human activities, such as fertilizers, pesticides and animal waste from agriculture and gardening. Industrial wastes like salts, acids, solvents, and heavy metals, are picked up by runoff. If some of the runoff can be diverted into rain gardens, plants and the soil can remove many of these substances before the water reaches the aquifer.
Although some cities have reservoirs to meet the residents' water needs, most water for our homes, agriculture, and industry comes from wells drilled into the aquifer. As our population increases and more land is developed, we allow less and less water to reach the aquifer while drawing more and more water from it. This is clearly not a sustainable practice.
Rain gardens planted with native plants can help restore natural habitat for wild creatures, reduce flooding and erosion, remove sediment and other pollutants from water and return water to the aquifer to conserve it for future generations, while enhancing the beauty of our surroundings and our enjoyment of nature.
There are plenty of how-to resources for building a rain garden. One of the most useful I've seen is Publication #EB-101 from the University of Georgia. It's available in print or on line at http://extension.uga.edu/publications/detail.html?number=EB101&title=Rain%20Gardens%20in%20Home%20Landscapes.