I wish you could have been there. Honestly. I don’t think I really understood the garden until I watched it being built. In my mind, the day plays out like a stop motion film. Little people busily going from dirt pile to dirt pile until suddenly everything is green.
Important Rain Garden Step 1: The Hole.
Toddler Heaven
The day began with the mini-excavator digging out the top part of our lawn in the general shape of the back garden and hauling away a dump truck load of land. Since that day, I’m certain that Quinn goes to bed each night wondering when his digger will return. We did the rest of the digging. It was a lot of digging.
The back garden went down to about a foot in depth. The front was less deep, but still a pretty substantial hole in the ground around the outtake for our sump pump.
In the front and back, the holes were made flat across the bottom to allow even distribution of water, and small hills of soil (also known as berms) were built along the back of each hole (the back being wherever water would get to last as it flows through the yard). These berms will help to keep water in the garden.
Back Before
Beginning of back trench
Important Rain Garden Step 2: The Soil.
Once the holes were nice and empty and flat, we filled them back up again with rain garden mix – that’s about 50-60% sand, 20-30% topsoil, and 20-30% compost. Local garden centers will likely know what to do when they hear the soil is for a rain garden. This kind of soil helps the water actually infiltrate the ground and not roll off into your local water system through your storm drains.
Once again, the point is to keep the water in the garden.
Take away dirt, add dirt. Gardening as an exercise in existentialism.
SOAPBOX ALERT: And here’s what’s interesting about all of this. The point is for EVERYONE to keep storm water from running off their properties – even if you don’t live on a waterfront. All of the water that goes through your storm drain has to end up somewhere and it picks up some pretty gross stuff on its journey. In fact, storm water runoff is the top culprit for pollution in our rivers and lakes.
Thanks for listening.
Important Rain Garden Step 3: The Plants.
Oh! The plants! When the nursery guy dropped off over 100 individual pots of grasses, flowers and bushes, even he couldn’t believe how much was about to go into the ground. I chose things that were pretty, but as long as the plants were native and relatively tightly packed, we’d be in good shape because native plants are tough and can have deep roots.
Our gardens have lots of lilies, irises, cardinal flowers, bushes like bay- and winterberry, and grasses. So, we’re also bound to get more birds and butterflies for added decoration. And, along the back and side of our yard, we have 40 low bush blueberries – a hearty water-sucking fruit-bearing, nostalgia-inducing natural berm.
Finally, everything was covered with 3 inches of mulch to keep the weeds away. We also added rock borders around the back of the berms which will be increased support – and look rather nice, if I do say so myself.
Front Garden
Back Garden
Huh, somehow this summary makes it seem kind of easy. Did I mention there was a lot of digging?
Today’s Garden Update:
As we watch the rain from recent storms pond around our lilies, Jack and I remain eternally grateful to our volunteers: Melanie, Holly, Jill, Barclay, Martha, and Emily and Sam from FB Environmental along with the support of Phyllis from Spruce Creek Association.
We wait for the flowers to bloom.
