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Alfresco
art is the city's grace Enjoy art outside, from Dale Chihuly's glorious and sometimes
gloppy glass at New York Botanical Garden to an eccentric 'Corner Plot' near Central
Park
Bar
is denied license for a beer garden
Busch
Gardens to detail new attraction on Wed
Citizens sue over approval of 606 homes in Garden Valley Group says Boise County
Commission called a private session on Southfork Landing without following law
Commissioner's
idea makes Lake Tobesofkee home to butterfly garden
Enjoy
rhythm and blues at Botanical Garden
Garden
oasis opens at Arlington Memorial
Garden
of youth Middle schoolers' summer project is a part of a national trend that lets
students learn how to grow, distribute and enjoy organic food
GARDEN
STEPPINGSTONES
Hillside
garden a labor of love
On
the grounds New gardens, old buildings will greet 2006 Fair visitors
Plant
a rain garden
Retail
'village' rises in Winter Garden
Time
to give your garden a late-summer pick-me-up
Water,
water everywhere Going away Planning will keep your garden green
Plant
a rain garden
The pesticides you apply to your lawn today could
end up in the Mississippi River tomorrow. It's called storm water runoff and Kyle
Zenz thinks it's time we did something about that.
Zenz is a basin educator
for natural resources with UW-Extension. It's her job to know about this kind
of stuff and do something about it, which is why she will be leading a workshop
on rain gardens on Friday and helping to build one at the South Side Neighborhood
Center in La Crosse on Saturday.
Though you can conserve water by having
your garden watered by rain water, there's a better reason to build a rain garden,
Zenz said.
"The bigger reason behind rain gardens is helping with storm
water runoff.
"All the storm water pretty much in every city runs directly
into the river," she said. "When we put water down our sink, it goes
through wastewater treatment."
But the water that falls on the roof
of your house, out through the downspout and across your lawn picks up all sorts
of pesticides and even oil when it runs across the driveway. And all that ends
up in rivers and lakes.
"And it's completely untreated," Zenz
said. With a properly designed rain garden, the water will stay in the garden
for a couple of hours and be filtered through the garden. That natural filtering
will take out much of what we don't want in our rivers and lakes, Zenz said.
"Our
lawns have a capability to filtrate some water, but not as much as you get in
a typical rain event," she said.
Typically, rain gardens are planted
with native plants that can tolerate drought so you don't have to haul out the
hose during dry times.
"There's a lot of really pretty flowers that
can be put in there," Zenz said.
But rain gardens are not care-free,
she said. "They do take a little bit of work. It's not going to be hassle
free. You need to give it a little bit of care."
If you've seen rain
gardens you think are a little unkempt, never fear, Zenz said. Your rain garden
doesn't have to be filled with tall, weedy-looking plants.
"A lot of
times people do put the coneflowers in there. They are gorgeous, but they are
tall. The mistake is putting nothing shorter in there. You need a graduation.
And have plants that bloom at different times of the year.
Planning is a
big part of the rain garden."
Here are some tips from UW-Extension
on rain gardens
- Rain gardens are landscaped areas planted with wild flowers
and other native vegetation to replace areas of the lawn, but not usually the
entire lawn. The gardens fill with a few inches of water that allows the rain
to slowly filter into the ground instead of running off into storm drains. Compared
to a conventional lawn, a rain garden allows about 30 percent more water to soak
into the ground.
- Typically, a rain garden is used to collect runoff from
the roof, so it is often built close to a downspout or in a naturally low area
in the yard.
- This is a garden, not a prairie, so the focus should be on
flowers, although some grasses can be uses.
- You need to maintain the garden
after planting, making sure to weed out the dandelions and other weeds until the
mature plants crowd them out.
- Leave the dead or dormant plants standing
during the winter as they will provide seeds and shelter for the birds. In spring,
cut them back or mow the stalks to allow new shoots to emerge.
- Installation
of a rain garden is slightly more work than installing a comparable section of
lawn, but maintenance is low once the plants mature.
Building a rain garden
-
Choose a location. The rain garden should be at least 10 feet from the house so
infiltrating water doesn't seep into the foundation. Don't place it over a septic
system. Don't choose a part of the yard that is already slow to drain. The point
of the rain garden is to encourage infiltration and slow-to-drain spots won't
encourage that. It's better to build in full or partial sun. Putting it in a flatter
part of the yard will make digging easier.
- Decide the size. It can be
almost any size, but a typical rain garden ranges from 100 to 300 square feet.
-
How deep should you dig? A typical rain garden is between 4 and 8 inches deep.
If you dig it deeper than that, it might retain water for too long. Less than
4 inches deep and you will need an excessive amount of surface area to provide
enough infiltration.
- What is your soil type? Sandy soils have the fastest
infiltration, clay soils have the slowest and silty soils are in the middle. If
you have clay soil, you'll need a larger area because the soil will take longer
to absorb the water.
- Before building the rain garden, think about how
it will catch water. If the water is coming from a downspout, it should flow out
evenly over the garden. The rain garden needs to be as level as possible so water
doesn't pool at one end and spill over before it has a chance to infiltrate.
-
The rain garden will need a berm or low wall on three sides to catch the water
that is coming in from the fourth side. You may need to dig a shallow swale from
the downspout to the rain garden to direct the water into the garden.
Plants
for the rain garden
In clay soil in full sun: Red milkweed, white false
indigo, blue flag iris, smooth penstemon, prairie blazing star, wild quinine,
yellow coneflower, false aster, sweet black-eyed Susan, ironweed, New England
aster, stiff goldenrod and fox sedge.
In loam to sand-loam soils and full
sun: Red milkweed, white false indigo, blue flag iris, smooth penstemon, nodding
pink onion, prairie blazing star, wild quinine, false aster, sweet black-eyed
Susan, New England aster, Ohio goldenrod and fox sedge.
In sandy soils and
full sun: Red milkweed, white false indigo, blue flag iris, smooth penstemon,
nodding pink onion, prairie blazingstar, wild quinine, false aster, sweet black-eyed
Susan, Ironweed, New England aster, Ohio goldenrod, fox sedge.
Still not
convinced that a rain garden will work for you? If you still want to garden with
all the colorful and newest plants, you can still incorporate a rain garden, Zenz
said.
"The rain garden can be your little experiment of plants. That's
what it is for some people. It's just a little showcase. It could be a small part
of your landscape. It can be as complex or as simple as you want it to be. Some
people like rain gardens because this is a different type of garden to try."
