A Really Big Rain Garden

The Baker Exhibit Center at the North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville is a LEEDS certified building incorporating many green practices to limit the need for electricity, heating, cooling, and use of water among other special features. It is a center for education, research, conservation, economic development and gardening demonstrations. There are activities and interesting sights for all ages. Because of the large impervious surface footprint it creates, the rain garden below is needed to help capture, absorb and control the quantities of rain water it displaces.

This is the rain garden at the North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville. It is a facility of the University of North Carolina. Although difficult to tell from this picture, the rain garden is at least 3,600 square feet. It drains the impervious surface of the large exhibit center as well as paving and sidewalk areas. The groups of plants you see are measured in dozens of grasses, dozens of shrubs. It is the finest rain garden I have yet to see.

In the lingo of architects and engineers, this would be called a BMP. For us normal gardeners, let me translate: that stands for 'Best Management Practices'. In the past we have often seen depressions in the ground filled with large gray rock and maybe containing cat tails and willow. These were the beginnings of controlling rain water run off. They were utilitarian but far from attractive. Thankfully, we have come a long way in the design of visually appealing 'BMP's'.