Homeowner Creates a ‘Rain Garden’ by Simply Redirecting the Flow — Now They’re Saving Lots of Water

As wise sages have repeated over the ages, everything that exists has a purpose. This applies to stagnant water, too. A gardener, who goes by the moniker u/bubble_gum_princess_ on Reddit, shared how he renovated a strip with poor drainage into a patch that would utilize water. They viewed the collected rainwater not as a bug, but as a feature, and this is how his beautiful “rain garden” was born.

Why is standing water dangerous?

Standing water resembles stillness, but it is, by no means, still. Within the dormant pool of this glistening liquid, slithers an ecosystem full of life- a poisonous one. This water sits on the land, accumulating dust. Every few moments, it gets trampled by the rolling feet of pedestrians, not to forget the bird droppings that drizzle down from thin air and plop into these waters. The longer it sits on the land, the more it turns into chaos, hissing with creepy organisms and stinging mosquitoes. Whatever the cause, a faulty piping system or a clogged drainage, the stagnant water remains a nuisance for many homeowners.

Rain garden for water harvesting

The homeowner said he had “standing water issues” on one side of the house. Every time it rained, the water would get collected on this yard strip. “Traditional drainage methods like French drains weren’t viable because our land is relatively flat and filled with trees, and we didn’t want to disturb any tree roots. So instead, we opted to divert the water towards our backyard and into a rain garden,” he described.

The Reddit member also shared four photographs of a landscape strip – two photos of its former condition and two of the latest. The photos depict a large brick wall running alongside an empty strip of land, and studded with windows in their single-storey house. The other side of the strip is fortified with a fence of wooden panels. These two photos show the condition of the strip following rain. The rainwater collected on the strip seems to be glistening under daylight.

Choose plants for the rain garden 

Two of the latest photos capture a transformed version of the strip, splattered with gravelly mulch and punctuated by clusters of ornamental grasses, pebbles, and bushes of assorted plants, including cast iron plants, Turk's caps, Gregg’s Mistflower, columbines, and a horsetail. There’s also a sprinkling of milkweed for visiting butterflies.

Additional elements to add to a rain garden 

A trail of planters is potted with lemon grass and citronella to shoo away mosquitoes. A burm, he said, was developed around 8 feet away from the foundational strip, where water would be collected. The strip was dotted with trees so their roots could soak up unused water. Rocks and pebbles were peppered throughout the corridor for erosion control. “Now this is inspirational, love it,” commented u/vannie91. u/calicoprincess said, “Immediate save! I have this exact situation and have been trying to come up with a way to remedy the standing water with some type of rain garden/native planting. This is awesome, great work!”

Water harvesting 

u/Casahaworthia referred to the pictures by sharing that this method is actually called “water harvesting,” a term often used by Brad Lancaster, the creator behind Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands & Beyond. According to his website, water harvesting is a process of utilizing on-site waters “in a way that maintains or improves their quality, maximizes their availability and accessibility over time, reduces on-site and downstream flooding in wet times, and helps grow more life and fertility.”

These waters could be rainwater, stormwater, street run-off, greywater, dark greywater, condensate, fog, or snowmelt. As for the gardener in question, he said the water in his newly-built garden drains “relatively quickly,” within two to three hours, which means he doesn’t face any issues with mosquito breeding. “The process to create it was definitely arduous and backbreaking, but worth it,” he exclaimed.

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