Rain Garden
Many people ask “what is a Rain Garden?” It is a form of environmental landscaping that everyone benefits from. The purpose of a Rain Garden is to capture storm water runoff that can be problematic by causing erosion or standing water. As green spaces are continued to be developed storm water from roofs and roadways are being directed to drainage systems. Farmville is in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and so our storm water runoff continues on to the Chesapeake Bay bypassing the local ground water table. It will continue to be important to capture this resource for control purposes as well as the benefits of recharging our local water table. Rain Gardens filter water as well as controlling erosion and runoff into streams. Wildlife can use the area as a habitat..
			First things first! To be able to appreciate the Rain Garden you need to experience the ugly ditch that was. We had tried a lot of solutions with no success. They included leaving it grassy and mowing, planting irises which always required a lot of hand trimming, mulching and planting creeping phlox, and the last attempt was planting a row of azaleas along the ditch. Well, all of those options were high maintenance, labor intensive, and just didn’t look good most of the time.
Our next problem was the amount of storm water that ran off the road and side yard into the drain and continued downhill through the ditch that emptied into our terraces below the gardens. The water then continued downhill across the “40 acres” of grass and across the property line causing wet conditions not conducive to growing and an erosion source.			We had to shoot a lot of levels to make sure that we continued to have sufficient fall for drainage and didn’t interfere with road drainage either. You can see that we truly live at the top of the hill.		The picture here isn’t tilted. This is the grade of the road we live on.
			After much planning and consultation the final configuration for our project was determined. Our project was much more complicated that a residential rain garden needs to be. All that is needed is an area where rain water can be collected that is dug into a shallow 4-6” depression. The depression is filled with biosoil, mulched and planted. The excavation began and the ugly ditch disappeared. What an exciting time! We chose to dig into the side of the yard down to the level of the road. Then we built a retaining wall using geocell material especially made to allow water to flow through while remaining stable.
Biosoil can be purchased from only 3 places in VA. If you have a small project here is a recipe I found for a good soil mixture: 20% leaf mulch 50% sandy soil 30% topsoil. The soil area provides the nutrients and water the plants need. Clay particle absorb heavy metals, hydrocarbons and other pollutants.			These were the biggest piles of dirt and mulch I’ve ever seen except at a garden supplier!
Here we are putting the first layer of geocell down. Each layer was stabilized with lengths of rebar.			While the big equipment was able to help fill the cells in a lot there was some shovel work. Here we are on our third layer and slowly coming up to the height of the lawn.
As each layer was filled it was compacted with the bachine shown. This also saved a tremendous amount of labor!			When the garden was all filled in we made sure that the topography of the dirt allowed water to enter, pond in a couple of areas and then flow through and out as needed.
Next came the weed block fabric and a top dressing of mulch.	Here is a view of the outlet we designed so any overflow of water is able to flow out and down into the culvert under the driveway.		Master Gardeners were given the opportunity to fulfill some of their volunteer obligations by helping to plant the garden. All help was gladly accepted.
Plantings were chosen that are drought tolerant and can also tolerate wet feet. We chose a Red Twig dogwood, Virginia Sweetspire, Soft Touch Hollies, Daylillies, Iris, Liriope, and Narcissus. Down through the middle we placed egg rock to mimic a dry stream bed. Don’t you just love Bob’s bridge in the middle!
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There! Now, doesn’t that look so much better! All of the land around the garden is graded so that it can be mowed with a riding lawnmower. The front cells of the wall will planted in creeping phlox this fall. Stay tuned to see how it looks in the spring. I’m already getting blossoms on my daylilies
Yellow Daylilly		Purple/Yellow Daylilly		Blackberry Daylilly
				To capture rain from the roof we have 2 rain barrels. This one is at the top of the side yard and we get an impressive water pressure out of the hose when aimed downhill. There is another rain barrel hidden behind the large Arborvitae on the other corner of the house in this picture. Cleanwaterva.org has more information on rain barells.
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