Decorative Grasses in the Rain Garden

Fall is upon us and soon we'll be settling into the winter weather season.  If your rain garden functions both as a storm water retention site and a decorative feature of your yard, you'll be looking at the grasses and wondering what to do.

By now, most grasses in USDA zones 5, 6 and even 7A have turned brown or beige.  Frosts have stopped the production of chlorophyll in the grass blades and they have died to ground level turning brown in the process.  Here in the Piedmont, our grasses are just beginning the color change that will last through winter.  The brown to beige grasses are quite interesting as they sway with each bit of winter wind.  I consider them one of the more attractive features of my winter rain garden.

So now is not the time to cut them back while tidying up the garden.  At the base of each grass blade is a tiny tube from which the grass blades sprout in spring.  Think of this tube as a straw.  Think of winter snows and rain running down into this straw and soaking into the roots.

I'm sure many of you have seen clumps of grasses with the center of the clump gone.  This is because the roots in that area have rotted out.  New growth forms around edges causing the 'ring' of grass you sometimes see.

Grasses should be trimmed back in early spring.  Since each variety comes out of dormancy at a slightly different time, you will need to check the clumps during your winter garden inspections and look for the tiny new green shoots emerging.  I usually cut back all of our grasses during February in North Carolina when the new shoots are about two inches in height.  If you wait too late in the spring, you risk chopping the tops out of this summers grass display.

Be sure to use sharp pruners and wear long sleeves and gloves when cutting back the clumps.  The dry brittle blades can irritate skin.

Enough technical info for today.  

Look for my next post that describes my hike through the Glenstone Preserve and information about the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Associations good work in promoting clean water and healthy creeks, streams and lakes.

Cheryl

The King's Daughters Inn 3 Year Old Rain Garden

The Maturing Rain Garden

It hardly seems that only three years ago there was a gaping hole in the front yard of the Inn.  A picture from my Rain Garden Handbook shows one gallon plants in plastic pots sitting atop the soil mix, ready to be planted.  Now, we enjoy the seasonal colors of blue indigo, hosta, siberian iris and especially the fantastic show of late summer grasses in bloom.

Our job now with this rain garden?  Keep windblown weed seeds from establishing and choking out our intended plant mix, and one unexpected mutation of a variegated hybrid reverting back to it's plain leaf form and spreading like crazy.  But Mother Nature is full of surprises so we dutifully get on hands and knees and dig roots of the unwanted invader.  

Beyond those small maintenance tasks, we can take pad and pencil and multiply the number of inches of rain by the capacity of our rain garden.  We humbly congratulate ourselves on the fact that in it's three year existence, this garden has diverted nearly 920,000 gallons of rain water from the overburdened storm water system of our City of Durham.  

Downtown areas with their large expanses of impervious surfaces create huge volumes of storm water runoff.  For us in Durham, this runoff is dumped mainly into a tributary of the Ellerbe Creek.  The Inn's location adjacent to downtown helps mitigate part of the volume of water from storm events.  

Thank you Colin and Deanna Crossman for the foresight and commitment to be a pioneer in new storm water management practices.

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.

Who says storm water management can't be pretty?

                                    Mums and Grasses flower in the October rain garden.

I went out to collect branches blown down in the latest cold front induced wind storm and happened to glance over at the rain garden.  The sun was in it's early afternoon position and shining at that perfect slant that makes colors so vibrant and shadows so interesting.

Last fall I had basically thrown the Chrysanthemums from our porch planter into the soil to see if I could keep them from freezing and ending up in the compost heap.  I love this coppery-red one and thought if it could survive, it would make a nice addition to the fall rain garden look.  Low and behold, the mums love the fast draining soil blend so don't rot out in winter like those planted in the other parts of our gardens.  

The cheery yellow blossoms are one of those happy windblown seed surprises that came from the Ellerbe Creek stream restoration across the street.  When the seedlings first popped up in spring, I thought I recognized the little leaves and decided to let them grow for the summer to see what they would become.

Nature is never static.  Ever evolving, plants either flourish or slowly dwindle away to non-existence.  I love this year's transformation of co-habitation by our plant families.

The Rain Garden Handbook now available as a Kindle Book

After 10 years of answering questions about rain gardens, I decided to write a book about them.  The questions came after my husband Michael and I created a rain garden in our yard.  Although other states had already created websites about the techniques of rain gardening, our state of North Carolina had yet to introduce information about them.  So we answered questions.  Lot's of them.  If you Google rain garden, you will see that today their are over 300,000 and climbing entries on the subject.

Most often asked questions were: What is a rain garden? Does it have fish in it?  And will it attract mosquitoes? 

It took two years to write the book and another year to get it properly edited and determine the best ways to market it.  I must confess, the last year could have been smoother if I knew as much about computers, software and the internet.  But then, I'm a gardener.

I wanted to provide the information about rain gardens in the most eco-friendly way possible.  In other words, I didn't want to cut down trees and produce hundreds of copies that would need to be shipped to folks, which required the use of other natural resources to deliver to door steps.

In the future, The Rain Garden Handbook will also be available as a Google electronic download to computers and as a last resort, a printed version will be available through 'My Space' for those not comfortable with Kindle or electronic versions or that don't have the ability to purchase in that manner.  I'll get to providing those options if future months and keep you posted when they are available.

For those looking for the Kindle version look for the following picture with the title:

The Rain Garden Handbook, Creating a Garden that Captures Rain Water

I hope this book helps inspire thousands of people to create rain gardens in their yards and by doing so helping to protect our waterways and water supplies.

Look to this blog for a history of our rain garden and how the whole project got started.

Please comment on the posts and ask questions about your own rain garden or the desire to create one.

It's started to rain here.  Think I'll go watch the rain garden for awhile.

It's 'Big Sweep' Day

This month and especially today, people in North Carolina are walking along river and creek banks, lake shores and cleaning up the trash.  You might wonder how this is related to rain gardens but consider it a partner plan that addresses other ways that our water becomes difficult to treat for human consumption. Imagine a creek filled with rusting cans, broken glass, plastic grocery bags, automotive parts and other machinery. Eventually metal tanks that contain oil or gasoline rupture allowing these toxic chemicals to mix with the water.

Then also imagine a wild creature cutting it's foot on the glass, becoming caught in the trash and drowning during a storm event or having the plastic wrapped around a creature's mouth so that is unable to eat or drink.  These are gruesome scenarios but preventing them is another way to help take care of our Mother Earth and her creatures.

Yes, it's hard work to crawl around in a creek and drag a rusting bicycle or automotive tire out during clean-ups.  Everyone isn't physically capable for this level of exertion.  But then again, you can put that rain garden in your yard to help. Once it's established just watch it work it's magic.   You can put rain barrels at the corners of your house and catch the run-off to later be used to water trees, gardens or other plants rather than turning on the tap.

I'd love to hear other folks ideas for protecting our water supplies.   Comment or drop me an email to tell me what you're doing.

Cheryl

A backyard rain garden or a storm water containment area, it's your choice

As I look across the street at the jungle that was once the sloping banks of the Ellerbe Creek, I wish that I could have looked into the future to see what the proposed 'stream restoration' was going to look like.
Promises of maintenance, benches for viewing the wetland, signage for education are all remembered but completely lacking.

As my post title suggests, you can make it your personal responsibility to contain the rain water that falls on your property or allow nature to take it's course and wash it all down hill to damage creeks, streams, rivers and lakes.  If you choose the latter, the government will intervene to solve the problem and as in so many cases, you will end up with a solution that doesn't fit your neighborhood or add to your quality of life.

Right now no one would want to sit and gaze at the jumble of native wildflowers, grasses, shrubs and trees that completely block the view of the creek and poze a safety issue for those walking the paths around it.  Low pockets in the constructed wetland areas hold water where mosquitoes breed.  They are not constantly filled so that the possibility of having fish and other aquatic creatures to eat the mosquito larvae is nil.

But my rain garden takes it's 1300 gallons of rainwater with each one inch of rain that falls, filters it through the special soil my rain garden plants grow in and eventually allows it to percolate through the subsoil layers and return to the water table perfectly clean.

This problem is becoming more prevalent in many parts of the country as fast growing cities must supply their inhabitents with clean drinking water.  If it hasn't happened yet in your area, wait and listen for the comments when drought ocurrs, reservoirs develop water quality problems and flooding becomes more widespread.

Like I said, it's your choice.