Starting (and maintaining) a rain garden can be a DIY activity

Susan Pang was logging the mandatory volunteer hours needed to become a Missouri master gardener at the Litzsinger Road Ecology Center in 2010 when a gift changed her landscape for life.

“I got my first native plant there, and that’s when I fell in love,” she says. 

A decade later, her lot is lawn-free and boasts a variety of native prairie plants, a natural frog pond, and other environmentally friendly features that draw birds, butterflies, and mosquito-eating amphibians. In addition to serving as a haven for wildlife, Pang’s property reduces runoff through stormwater-management features, including four rain gardens. 

“The water has to go somewhere, and often it doesn’t go where people want it to go,” Pang says. 

Rain gardens, which are set in a natural soil basin 4 to 8 inches deep, are designed to capture the first inch or so of a rainfall. They’re populated with plants that absorb the water within about 48 hours, reducing runoff, erosion, flooding, and pollution from pesticides and other chemicals that could find their way into rivers and streams. A rain garden might have a trench that guides water from a home’s downspout into the planted basin. Some rain gardens follow the natural flow of water down an existing slope. Every rain garden should include a berm on the downhill side of the basin to help retain water, says Rob Kennedy, rainscaping programs manager for the Missouri Botanical Garden.  

“But you definitely want a break in the top of the berm so it doesn’t pool over and have kind of a volcano effect and erode and move all your mulch around,” he says. “You want it to have a strategic area where water can escape.”

Deep-rooted native shrubs such as buttonbush and nannyberry do well in rain gardens. Home gardeners can look at what grows in natural watersheds for ideas to populate their plant palettes, and Pang has found that the plants typically sort themselves out over time.

“If plants want to go higher, they’ll climb higher. If they want to go lower, they’ll go lower. When you have a rain garden like this, you let nature do its thing,” she says. “All I’m doing is getting rid of weeds.”

Depending on the scope of a project and a homeowner’s proficiency, starting a rain garden can also be a DIY activity. MSD’s Project Clear and the Deer Creek Watershed Alliance offer funding for qualified rainscaping projects, says Ned Siegel, a master gardener.

“A typical homeowner with a typically sized rain garden doesn’t need a big backhoe to come in,” he says. “It’s pretty simple basics: gloves, a shovel, a tape measure, and a plan.”

Selecting a site where the soil soaks up retained water before mosquitoes can breed is important, and Siegel also cautions homeowners against letting gardens completely go after planting.

“One of the misconceptions is that it’s going to be maintenance-free,” he says. “No garden is maintenance-free. With native plants, a little less maintenance is typically required, but it’s going to be a different design aesthetic than geraniums and begonias in a neat little bed. That said, natives and rain gardens do need a maintenance plan as well.”

For instance, Pang and her husband, Kei, who installed their own rain gardens, spent some time last season culling cattails. Pang devotes time and energy to educating others about planting native species, advising them to tour such areas as the Shaw Nature Reserve, attend classes on “re-wilding” their yards, and access such resources as Seedbox, a network of people collecting and sharing organic seeds for locally adaptive native plants.

“It’s not like going to a big-box store on Saturday morning and picking out whatever they have available,” Pang says. 

She likens it to the educational awakening that’s led many Americans in recent years to eat less meat and fewer processed foods.

“I think the same will happen with our outdoor spaces and how we care for the Earth around us,” she says. “We won’t assume that everyone has a lawn and that’s the only choice out there.”