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Looking to add a cool feature to your landscape that makes your lawn stand out and benefits wildlife and the environment?  Why not add a rain garden?  Think of a rain garden as a pond that does a terrible job of holding water, but it is a great place to grow colorful native plants and grasses.  The pond functions by collecting rainwater channeled from roofs, patios, driveways – and often the overflow of a Texas Metal Tank rainwater cistern.  It then lets water slowly drain into the soil.

In more technical terms, a rain garden is a shallow depression in the ground designed to capture and slowly absorb rainwater from impervious surfaces such as rooftops, sidewalks, driveways, roads, or anything that is paved over.  Native plants and grasses in the bottom and along the sides tolerate both wet and dry conditions.  The rain garden can hold water for up to three days preventing mosquito infestations. Depending on the depth of your rain garden, you might have different zones to accommodate the water tolerance for various plants.  You wouldn’t plant cacti in the bottom!

Rain gardens provide several benefits for the environment:

• They act like a natural sponge absorbing pollutants.  Under normal circumstances, toxic chemicals like oil, grease, and pesticides would flow into the street, drain into a storm sewer, and go directly to a creek and eventually the Gulf of Mexico or ocean. 
• Rain gardens control the amount of runoff preventing erosion in those local creeks.  Sedimentation is the number one pollutant in our waters!
• Another key benefit of rain gardens is they allow water to percolate into our underground aquifers.  In Texas, nearly 60% of our water supply relies on aquifers – for drinking water, agriculture, irrigation, and industrial needs.
• Rain gardens help with flooding too!  Particularly in central Texas, we are seeing more frequent and heavier rain events.  Rain gardens help offset the increase in impermeable surfaces.

From the homeowners’ perspective, rain gardens have several direct benefits as well:

• Rain gardens help keep your soil and your water on your property!  Why let the rain run off and take your soil with it?
• Rain gardens are valuable to pollinators and birds too!  Pollinators include native bees, moths, and of course butterflies!  Plants bloom March through December, providing nectar for migrating and resident butterflies almost year-round.  Hummingbirds enjoy the nectar too.  Native grasses provide nesting material for birds, and many plants provide seeds eaten by finches, chickadees, doves, titmice, and nuthatches.
• Rain gardens generally require less maintenance than lawns.  No mowing or fertilizing is necessary!

As rain gardens grow in popularity, we see a lot of customers integrating a rainwater harvesting tank into their rain garden design .  Many customers collect rainwater from their roof into a tank, then have the rainwater tank overflow into the rain garden.  During drought periods, rainwater can supplement your garden as well as other plants in your yard.

For more information, Grow Green and the City of Austin have a great brochure explaining installation and a recommended plant list.  Download here.

A Rain Garden in Austin, TX

Photo Credit MA Watershed Coalition and EPA

Iowa NRCS Urban Conservation Photo Gallery

Native Rain Garden Plants

• Texas columbine (Aquilegia hinckleyana)
• Blue Texas star (Amsonia illustria)
• Longspur columbine (Aquilegia longissima)
• Blue mistflower (Eupatorium coelestinum)
• Turk’s cap (M. aboreus var. Drummondii)
• Blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium)
• Cross vine (Bignonia capreolata)

For more plant options, see Texas A&M AgriLife Extension’s list of plants suited for rain gardens or search the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center native plant database.