Landscape Design: Adding a Rain Garden

While everyone's familiar with vegetable gardens, herb gardens, and flower gardens, many homeowners have never even heard of a different type of eco-friendly garden.

What is a Rain Garden?

Rain gardens are planted in depressions around areas of excessive water runoff around your property, such as roofs, sidewalks, porches and driveways. When planting these garden types, you should use native plants, as they are accustomed to the climate, therefore requiring less maintenance, and are good at absorbing excess water. The garden slowly filters water into the ground, reducing the amount of storm water runoff around your home.

Environmental Impact

In many urban areas, where most surfaces are covered by buildings or concrete, storm water can't be absorbed by the ground. It has nowhere to go but down storm drains, carrying pollution along with it. Rain gardens help reduce the amount of rainwater forced down storm drains, thereby reducing the amount of polluted water that ends up in rivers and groundwater.

Origins

These garden types originated in Maryland during the early '90s as part of a low impact design for landscapes. These were most common on larger-scale projects like subdivisions. However, many landscapers have recently started offering these gardens in their landscaping services for their increasing popularity, due in part to their ease of maintenance.

Why You Should Consider Adding a Rain Garden

On rain water's way to the storm drain, it picks up things like animal waste, garbage, road salt, fertilizers and pesticides. According to an EPA report, nearly 70% of all of America's surface water pollution comes from storm water runoff. Rain gardens greatly reduce the amount of storm water runoff your property produces, thereby reducing the amount of pollution to our streams, rivers and lakes. These gardens also help you maintain the rest of your yard by reducing the amount of standing water that may accumulate in it, eliminating places for mosquitoes to breed as well as helping you conserve water.

Installation

There is a lot more to installing a rain garden than your usual DIY gardening project. This is why it's a good idea to at least consult a professional landscaping design service before you get started on the project to get a feel for what's involved. That said, here are the basic steps for installing a eco-friendly garden.

1. Make a map of your yard. This map should show how water flows on your property, so that you can build the rain garden in the most ideal spot. As you walk around your yard, note any slopes, depressions or hills.

2. Pick a spot. From the information you've gathered mapping out your property, choose a spot. Some good choices are often downspouts or any other areas of your yard that commonly accumulate the most water.

3. Determine the soil's drainage rate. This step is a bit technical, which is why it should probably be done by a professional. It involves digging a hole and testing the soil's rate of water drainage. This information will help you determine the best type of rain garden to incorporate into your landscape design.

4. Determine its size. In most cases, rain gardens are between 6 to 24 inches deep. A landscaping service professional should be able to determine what size is most appropriate for your yard.

5. Start digging. This step is also one that's probably best left to a landscaping services company. This includes constructing the bed, planting appropriate native plants, and accommodating for water overflow. You may also need to create a rock-lined trench to direct water from downspouts to the garden.

6. Maintenance. One of the nice things about rain gardens is that you can easily handle the maintenance on your own. This involves simple things like pulling weeds, mulching and pruning. Most homeowners simply work maintaining their rain garden into their usual gardening routine.

Though they may be a relatively new landscape design option to most homeowners, rain gardens are becoming much more popular due to both their benefits as well as their natural beauty. If you'd like to incorporate an eco-friendly garden into your yard, there are many landscaping professionals who will be glad to help you work out the details of building your very own garden.

Backyard Landscape - Winning the Battle of the Weeds in Your Small Garden

 

Once you have finished your small garden design and started the installation you will certainly be quickly faced with every gardener's nemesis: weeds.

Just like the plants you have so carefully selected for your new garden weeds are living, breathing plants that will thrive in the same conditions you are so carefully creating with your new small garden design.

In other words, the very nutritious soil you are providing for the ornamental plants will feed and nurture the weeds as well.

The bottom line is the same things that make your garden so lovely, nutrition, sunlight, and water will also help weeds to thrive as well.

So how to get rid of the weeds, or at least keep them under control, without spending every waking hour pulling them out? The only thing you can deny weeds without killing your desired plants at the same time is sunlight and that can be accomplished in a couple of ways.

Turning the soil by hand will bury the weeds in it and kill them very effectively. The drawback to this method is, depending on the size of your beds, labor intensive and will need to be done every few days, as often as new weeds appear.

This job can be made easier by using a small sized rototiller to turn the soil instead of doing it by hand. Some will tell you that using a rototiller will just chop up the weeds and cause more to grow. While this is true to a degree, the secret is to turn the soil, wait until the surface is dry, and then turn again. Repeating this over several days will eventually cause all your weeds to dry out and die.

The other solution is to cover your beds with mulch which will also deprive weeds of sunlight. This works very well but the organic mulch material will eventually begin to rot and turn into prime weed growing soil itself. When that begins to happen, you will need to add more mulch material.

Under no circumstances should you install the weed control fabric or black plastic as a weed control device.

Both the fabric and the plastic are extremely unattractive and will need to be covered either with mulch or soil which defeats the whole purpose of putting it down in the first place. The material you use to cover it will, in time, begin to rot and become a prime breeding ground for weeds. But now you have to deal with the fabric or plastic as well as the weeds. A good rule to follow is never put anything in your garden that won't breakdown naturally.

New Backyard Landscaping Ideas - Create a Spanish Style Vertical Garden

Dare to be different with some fresh backyard landscaping ideas. You have laid the stone for the patio, you have thought about the lawn and flowerbeds, you have decided where to put the hot tub (if you are lucky enough to have a hot tub). These are ground level backyard landscaping ideas. How about some backyard landscaping ideas that rise above the ground and reach for the sky? Dare to be different and create a wonderful Mediterranean hanging garden and make the most of your vertical space.

A vertical garden will really make your backyard landscaping ideas come to life. Now you can look at a blank wall as if you are an artist about to create a work of art. The blank wall is your blank canvas you will transform into a beautiful living picture of pots and flowering plants that can change into a riot of colour all year round.

Spanish style flower pot holders are available that are specially designed to carry plastic or terracotta pots or even wicker work conical baskets. They are a brilliant for backyard garden ideas because they are strong being made of mild steel and last for years. Not only that, these pot holders are available in different sizes so you can use your existing pots to create a wonderful pattern. These flowerpot holders will add a new dimension to your backyard landscaping ideas. Just add geraniums or trailing fuchsias or any summer bedding plant suitable for use in hanging baskets or window boxes or flowerpots. In the winter you can introduce pansies, ornamental cabbages, ferns and evergreens to brighten up the garden and keep your backyard landscaping ideas looking great.

For a moment imagine you are enjoying a alfresco meal and a glass of soft fruity glass of wine surrounded by flowers creating that feeling of an extra outside room to the house, knowing that this was one of the best backyard landscaping ideas because the transformation was so easy to do and looking so lovely. Cheers!

Spanish Rings are Spanish style flower pot holders that create a wonderful Spanish style Mediterranean patio garden. Spanish Rings are simple yet stunning. They are easy and quick to fit on to walls, trellises and downpipes or posts. They brighten up a patio garden, fence, house wall or back yard. They make an attractive garden accent or garden ornaments.

Spanish Rings are available to hold standard flower pots with a rim-to-rim diameter of 5"/12.5cm, 6"/15cm, 7"/17.5cm or 8"/20cm. Spanish Rings are coated in different coloured PVC to protect against the weather, popular colours are dark green, terracotta brown or black. Spanish Rings are strong and last for years they are manufactured from mild steel.