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October 26, 2009

Rain garden: After the rain

Chesapeake Rainscaping The saga of the rain garden installation, which was completed late Friday, took a dramatic turn on Saturday when a series of storms swept through Annapolis, causing not one, but three "gully-washers."

The rain garden filled and emptied quickly the first time. Not so quickly the second time. And there was standing water by Saturday night.

A neighbor who has a pretty accurate rain gauge reported that 1 3/4 inches of rain had fallen in Annapolis in about four hours. The rain garden was designed to handle an inch of rain, so it was getting a pretty severe test.

During the third cloudburst, the water did as it was directed to do and emptied out into the street via a small spout lined with rocks. This is to prevent the rain garden from overflowing its berms in a mini version of what happened in New Orleans.

By Sunday morning there was still plenty of water in the rain garden. By Sunday evening, only a cup or so remained, collected in the lowest point. By Monday morning, the rain garden was empty, though certainly it hadn't had time to completely dry out.

In short, the rain garden did its job, collecting the rain from most of my roof and from the slope of the yard.

Jack Dawson of Chesapeake Rainscaping and I have some repairs to make and some more mulching to do, and I suddenly understand why he was so insistent that the plants be planted on the berm, out of the way of the standing water.

Let me know what you think, but I think the rain garden is beautiful right now, with the rock wall and the pebble paths and the airy planting. I can only imagine how wonderful it will look in the spring.

For a look at the rain garden on Monday morning, keep reading.

Chesapeake Rainscaping

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Posted by Susan Reimer at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
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October 23, 2009

Rain garden: Can you dig it?

Chesapeake Rainscaping

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...

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Posted by Susan Reimer at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: rain gardening

Rain garden: Headline news

Those of you following the construction of my rain garden might be wondering why I haven't mentioned Jeff Dawson, Jack's brother and partner in Chesapeake Rainscaping.

Jeff is sick with the H1N1 flu.

Once again, Garden Variety is ahead of the news.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 1:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Rain garden: the shopping list

Chesapeake Rainscaping I love projects that involve shopping!

This time, however, Jack Dawson of Chesapeake Rainscaping did the shopping.

The list of supplies to build the rain garden included: a roll of filter fabric (of which we will use only a small part); 5 bags of gravel for the reservoir; 3 bags of compost to mix with the very clay-like soil and improve drainage; four bags of river run stone for aesthetics and erosion control; flagstone for the low wall; flex pipe to collect and direct the rainwater from the downspout, and four bags of shredded hardwood mulch.

Total cost? About $260.

Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Susan Reimer

Posted by Susan Reimer at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Rain garden, continued

Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Susan Reimer

The rain garden is being installed by Chesapeake Rainscaping, a company in its infancy started by Jack Dawson, the brother with the engineering degree, and Jeff Dawson, the brother with the economics degrees.

The brothers also have something I don't have. The strength to do all this digging!

(Full disclosure here. I didn't find this company in the Yellow Pages. I have known both brothers since they were in elementary school.)

Jack calculated the size of my roof, where most of the rain will come from, and the slope of the yard and factored in the rain barrel I have on my deck, and he came up with the appropriate size of the rain garden.

Then we argued about that size.

My husband, who loves his grass and the cutting of it, has always viewed me as Hitler and his yard as the Rhineland. I have already taken over so much of it for my gardens that I have become a bit self-conscious.

Since the rain garden will be in a corner of my corner lot, we needed to make sure there was enough room between the rain garden and the giant Nelly Stevens holly on the corner of the house for the lawn mower to pass through on its way to the side yard!

Before he began, Jack also had to locate the utilities, an important step before digging.

Next: Saving the plants.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: rain gardening

Rain gardening

Rain gardening Today begins the installation of my rain garden.

There is a corner of my yard that sits so low that a heavy rain will literally wash the dirt and mulch - and seeds -- into the street. I have actually had verbena bonariensis growing in the sediment in the curb.

The really bad news is, that rainwater, carrying, dirt, mulch, nitrogen and pollutants from my roof, washes into a nearby storm drain and straight into the Chesapeake Bay.

A rain garden is a garden built to collect that rain. Sitting even lower that the surrounding yard and constructed with filtering stone or organic material and surrounded by small berms, it traps much of the rain and, over a day or two, allows it to pass down through the earth's natural filters and into the water table. Clean as a whistle.

The rain garden doesn't have to catch all the rain. The first inch contains almost all of the pollutants. But the plants I install there are going to have to be able to handle both drought and boggy conditions -- a tricky combination.

More and more municipalities are requiring rain gardens in new construction. And other communities are installing them in public spaces where rainwater runoff is a problem.

Home gardeners can do their part. A rain garden doesn't have to be large. And it can be beautiful.

Stay tuned here at Garden Variety today for more pictures of the rain garden and more information about installing one of your own.

Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Susan Reimer

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Posted by Susan Reimer at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
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