Landscaping: Rain Gardens

Rain gardens are encouraged in Seattle to help reduce the amount of water going into the sewer/storm drain system, which can become overloaded in heavy rains. A significant rebate was being offered to homeowners to have rain gardens installed by approved contractors. We wandered our neighborhood to get design ideas. Sometimes rain gardens just look like weed trenches and sometimes they meld nicely into the landscape and are hardly noticeable. Rebate eligibility is determined by adherence to a set of rules and we determined that 1) we didn't want to follow the rules and 2) it would actually be cheaper for us to do it ourselves even though we'd be passing up the rebate.

Nick calculated the necessary grade, which meant a lot of dirt movement. Our neighbor helped cut down an overgrown cherry tree that was planted on his property line and we gave a mature camellia bush/tree away to someone who showed up with an excavator to dig it up and move it. In the process, the excavator tipped and the man dislocated his shoulder. I took him to the emergency room, which was especially interesting because he didn't speak English. We were happy to not get sued.

We discovered the most effective way to tear out the lawn was by using a mattock ax and working away at it by hand. Oh, the blisters!

Grading.

Next, we dug a trench around the perimeter of the house (in the pouring rain no less) and laid irrigation pipe and catch basins under each down spout. Again, Nick figured out the precise slope so that everything would drain properly into the rain garden. We tested the drainage of our soil which provided the needed value to plug into an equation to determine the dimension of the hole needed for the rain garden. As we graded the back yard, we picked out river rock that we would then use in the rain garden. No rock was purchased in the making of this rain garden!

New rain garden.

The pieris was transplanted as a focal point of the garden, but speaking now from the future, I'm not sure the transplant will succeed. Our rain garden looked a little silly when all of the plants were small, but we've been pleased with how it's come together now that the plants have grown.

Can you see where the drain pipe is hidden?	March 2018.