Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Susan Reimer

Jack Dawson of Chesapeake Rainscaping has spent all afternoon digging -- another reason to hire someone to install your rain garden.

He's the engineer, but if I understand him correctly, he has dug an ever deeper trench that will draw water from the slope of the yard to a low point in the rain garden.

He lined the deepest part of the trench with filter paper that has a 30-year life and then lined the filter paper with gravel. Then he folded the filter paper over top of the gravel to prevent soil from clogging up our gravel reservoir.

Next, Jack dug a trench from the downspout on the corner of the house to the rain garden and buried the flexible tubing that will carry the rainwater into the garden.

At the point where the tubing enters the garden, Jack made a small retaining wall of slate and stone, to slow the flow of the water and to prevent erosion.

Next Jack will be returning the soil, mixed with compost, to the garden, which will sit much lower than it did before.

Then it is my job to make some decisions and place the plants. We will finish with a three-inch layer of mulch, which itself absorbs more rainwater than you can imagine.

The sky is cloudy and it looks like rain is coming. Sunset is not far away. Installing a rain garden doesn't appear to be a one-day project, but I can see that it can easily be done in a weekend.

What have I been doing all afternoon while Jack has been digging?

Planting pansies.

And yes, I am one.

For more pictures of the building of the rain garden, keep reading...