Rain Garden Celebrates Ten Years of Rain Water Collection

Just for the fun of it, I decided to look up precipitation amounts for the last ten years that we have had a rain garden.  I wanted to determine just what kind of impact our little 'garden' was actually making on preventing polluted run-off and preservation of waterways.

IT'S OFFICIAL!  From 2002 until October of 2012, our rain garden has diverted 210,000 gallons of water from entering our city's storm water system.  Add to that another 100,000 gallons that accumulated in our rain barrels and we have a grand total of 310,000 gallons of rain water.  The rain garden water has been properly filtered and entered the water table cleaned and ready for reuse. The rain barrel water went directly to thirsty plants that didn't seem to mind the lack of filtered quality.

We also used the rain barrel water to fill our water gardens. Fish don't do well in chemically treated water so turning on the tap is never an option.

Now if we can just convince more neighbors how big an impact is possible, we can make a difference.

If your state allows the collection of rain water, please consider how you can do your part in protecting the precious 2% of all our planets water that is actually consumable.  The other 98% forms our oceans and requires desalinization to be potable or used for irrigation purposes at considerable expense because of the energy needed to complete the process.

Tell me how many gallons of rain water you are able to save in your rain garden.  Remember, 1000 square feet of impervious surface with one inch of rain will yield aprox. 638 gallons of rain water.