Rain gardens offer a variety of benefits, learn more April 8

This past week saw our first tease of spins-like temperatures and gave us a gentle reminder that spring is truly just around the corner. I love watching everything green up in the spring and the first yellow blossoms come out from their winter’s slumber.

But as full of hope and promise as spring is, there’s another constant I dread: our Ashland SWCD becomes inundated with calls and complaints about standing water on homeowners’ properties. 

The problems are usually multi-faceted, starting with natural elevations and drainage patterns and made worse by Ohio’s changing weather patterns that seem to bring more frequent, higher intensity rain events to our area. Add to that new building and development with more impervious surfaces, and runoff multiplies. The end results is often standing water, and usually in the places we want it least.

So what’s a homeowner to do? The answer, like the problem, is often complex and rarely a simple fix. But, one option many homeowners are turning to to help manage the water runoff on their own properties is installation of a rain garden.

Rain gardens are designed to capture rain water and prevent the rapid release of stormwater into both musical water systems and rural waterways. Well-placed rain gardens rude runoff and flooding while filtering the pollutants often carried in stormwater runoff. As an added bonus, rain gardens can create excellent habitat for birds, bees, butterflies and other pollinators.

With all of those benefits, why aren’t rain gardens more common? First, they are a relatively new water management practice and many people aren’t aware of the many benefits they can provide. That’s why Ashland SWCD will be hosting a Rain Garden Workshop at the Ashland County Service Center Pavilion on April 8 at 6 p.m. Pre-registration is required. The $25 workshop fee includes a packet of rain garden seeds for each participant and refreshments; the seed packet includes enough seeds to cover 250 square feet.

Participants will learn more about rain garden benefits, how to select a rain garden site, what plants are best suited for rain gardens, and the basics of installation. And, they will learn about some common misconceptions about rain gardens, too.

One such misconception is that standing water in rain gardens can breed mosquitos. However, because rain gardens are designed to drain in less than 24 to 48 hours, there’s simply not enough time time for a mosquito breeding environment to develop.

Another myth is that the only plants that require wet growing conditions are a good fit for rain gardens. Remember, rain gardens are designed to drain in 24 to 48 hours; they are not ponds. Most of the time, rain gardens are dry. An ideal rain garden planting includes plants that tolerate a range of conditions. Plants in the lower part of the garden have to be tolerant of water during runoff events, but they also need to be able to tolerate periods of drought.

A final misconception is that rain gardens look wild and weedy. Like any garden, rain gardens can look weedy when plants grow too tall and flop over, too many plant varieties are used, plants are not placed in district groupings and edges are not defined. To be honest, the sounds a little bit like my gardens. However, proper plant selection and placement in the rain garden can make rain gardens a beautiful addition to the landscape.

As Ashland County continues to grow and develop, so does the amount of stormwater runoff. Simple logic dictates that more roof and road surfaces results in less available land to absorb water during rain events. That surface runoff picks up pollutants from parking lots, driveways and even farm fields and deposits them directly into our streams, rivers, and municipal water systems.

Consider installing a rain garden as your personal contribution to clean water in your community. A single rain garden may seem like a small thing, but collectively, they can make a meaningful impact on our community and water quality. To learn more about rain gardens, register to attend our Rain Garden Workshop or by calling 419-281-7645. Unable to attend? Consider purchasing a rain garden seed packet (or other native seeds) through our Ashland SWCD native seed sale.