Rain Gardens

Rain gardens create natural areas that filters water and creates an inviting place for a variety of birds and insects.

Maintain your Rain Garden in the Winter!  Watch the video to learn how.

NEW-Click here to read the Hometown Gazette's article about Patricia Pennell and Rain gardens 

Bioretention areas, or rain gardens, are landscaping features adapted to provide on-site treatment of stormwater runoff. They are commonly located in parking lot islands or within small pockets of residential land uses. Surface runoff is directed into shallow, landscaped depressions. These depressions are designed to incorporate many of the pollutant removal mechanisms that operate in forested ecosystems.  

Rain gardens are a useful way of capturing stormwater and diverting it into planned water collection areas.  Rain gardens can be utilized in areas where there is a natural low spot or dug out as a drainage ditch next to a parking lot or sidewalk.  Planting and landscaping this area make a more aesthetically pleasing area to look at than a place where trash and standing water are. 

As seen from the photographs, a well planned rain garden can add more benefits than simply diverting and cleansing water.  An attractive place to read and discover nature in an urban area utilizing this type of approach will help people feel connected to nature and provide for a communal space to sit and talk with others.  The photograph of the residential implementation of the rain garden will not only be capturing water to keep the garden looking beautiful but will also prevent the fertilizer from the lawn going direclty into the storm drain.