How to Grow a Twilight Garden
Ideas for planting a garden you can enjoy when the sun goes down.
Too Much Rain? How to Protect Your Yard from Summer Washouts
Summer’s hot, dry spells usually shine the focus on making sure plants in the yard get enough water.
But given the increasing bouts of extreme rain dumpings that many parts of the U.S. experienced this past spring and sometimes even in summer, the opposite problem also can pop up – what to do about too much water.
Excess rain is harder to manage than dealing with dryness, which can be addressed with some well timed and well directed irrigation.
Heavy and/or prolonged rain, on the other hand, can’t be managed. You get what you get. And too much too fast can wash out new plants, erode soil, and waterlog garden beds to the point of rotting roots.
Now that excesses both ways are becoming the new norm, a new word has crept into the gardening lexicon – "rainscaping."
Here’s an example of a planted rain garden – slightly sunken to collect storm water. Photo by George Weigel
Rainscaping and rain gardens
Rainscaping is crafting the yard in a way that manages water smartly, both coming into the yard and leaving it.
Gravitating toward drought-tough native plants and covering soil with mulch, for example, are ways to make the most of limited water during dry spells.
Building a rain garden, on the other hand, keeps rain on site, lessens flooding, and keeps potential pollutants from running off into streams when downpours happen.
A rain garden is a sunken bed that’s been dug and improved with well draining soil amendments so that rain is collected and allowed to seep into the area instead of run off. Such gardens are designed so that all of the rain has soaked in within 24 to 48 hours.
Rain gardens are planted with species that can tolerate occasionally wet soil – the most wet-tolerant ones in the middle and somewhat wet-tolerant species higher up and around the perimeter.
Rain gardens are particularly effective when installed out from storm drains and downspouts or any part of the yard that’s in path of runoff. Many state agencies and Extension offices have plans that go into detail on how to build a rain garden.
Planted garden beds absorb more rain water than hard surfaces or lawns. Photo by George Weigel.
More ways to manage excess summer rain
Rain gardens are just one way to make yards more "water-friendly." Six more strategies:
- Plant trees. Trees are good at soaking up soil moisture, and colonies of them are even better at acting like nature’s sponges in downpours.
One North Carolina study found that a wooded area absorbs three times as much rain as a typical lawn before runoff occurs.
- Add garden beds. Even if you don’t go with a sunken rain garden, mulched beds full of shrubs and flowers absorb more rain than lawns and especially more than hard surfaces.
Studies have found that only about 10 percent of rain typically runs off of planted spaces compared to as much as 55 percent from space dominated by houses, driveways, and sidewalks.
- Install one or more rain barrels. These capture water from downspouts that can be used the next time summer weather goes dry. Use the water on ornamental beds and container plants.
- Avoid bare soil. Bare soil allows more and faster runoff, which in turn leads to soil erosion. Either fill space with plants or add two or three inches of mulch. Coarser mulch materials such as wood chips and pine needles are particularly good at absorbing rain.
- Create grassy or vegetated swales. Swales are shallow channels that guide water away from houses or other areas where you don’t want water flowing. If you don’t go the catch-and-soak-in route of a rain garden, at least steer runoff to a preferred location where it can drain and mitigate damage.
Grassed swales are better than concrete ones, and groundcover-planted ones are better than grassy ones for absorbing water.
- Buffer those streams. If you have a creek or stream running through your property, plant the banks with native shrubs, perennials, and groundcovers to capture pollutants and sediment and to help hold the soil in place. Planted buffers are more effective at that than keeping mowed grass right up to the water’s edge.
