Do You Need a Rain Garden?

A Rain Garden can help you with a problem wet area in your yard.

A rain garden can help with a wet spot in your yard. If you have a low spot that collects water or a downspout that creates a flood in your yard, a rain garden can help use that moisture. Native plants are perfect for this as they have deep roots and can absorb the moisture from the runoff in your yard while using it to grow beautiful plants. Native plants also filter out impurities and excess nitrogen and prevent those contaminants from running off into the street and entering local streams and rivers. Rain Gardens also help by reducing the amount of rain water from running down into storm sewers and reducing flooding.

The first step is to define the low spot that would make a good place to locate your rain garden. Generally this should be at least 10 ft away from the foundation of your house to prevent seepage into your basement or crawl space. After you have done that you need to kill off the sod in the area where your rain garden will be. This is done by putting down a layer of newspaper or builders paper in the area you want to use then covering the paper with mulch or wood chips.

At the lowest end of your area you may want to build up a short berm with soil possibly dug from the center of your area to create a bowl where excess water can collect. Don’t be too concerned with standing water and attracting mosquitoes, The plants you are going to use in the garden will absorb the excess rain in a day or two. If you are going to catch rain from a downspout you may want to  dig a trench and use a perforated drain pipe to direct to runoff to your rain garden.

Next you will want to choose native plants that like wet areas and/or moist soils. Most sedges, turtlehead, cardinal flower, joe pye weed, monarda, some milkweeds, blue flag iris, blue lobelia and many other plants that like wet feet will do well in a rain garden. The Wildflower Preservation and Propagation Committee can help you with plant suggestions and we have a good selection of moisture loving plants at our annual Plant Sale the first Sunday in May at the McHenry County College.

For suggested plants click HERE

For sample plant plot click HERE