A rain garden is a flower bed designed to function as a shallow bowl to retain rain water run-off.

A rain garden can be a very small, naturally low wet area in a garden, or it may be a carefully calculated, excavated, and constructed drainage system more to the scale of an industrial bioretention pond.

Residential rain garden projects easily handle the run-off from driveways, patios, and even downspouts..

New construction capitalizes on all of the run-off from the carefully crafted lot, and manages significantly more stormwater along a large portion of the edge of the lot.

A rain garden absorbs significantly more stormwater than a traditional lawn, and showcases a wide variety of trees, shrubs, grasses, and flowers suitable to all landscape styles and to  the seasonal flooding and hot, dry summers.

Native plants thrive in seasonal flooding where many traditional landscape plants simply cannot tolerate the soil moisture. Plants such as bald cypress, buttonbush, iris, cardinal flower, and river oats provide food and shelter for wildlife as well.

Rain is natural. Stormwater is not - - stormwater is the rain that no longer soaks into the ground because of buildings and parking lots.

Stormwater causes soil erosion. Rain gardens mitigate soil erosion.

Stormwater carries pollutants to rivers. Rain gardens filter pollutants as water percolates to the water table.

Stormwater is lost in the storm sewer system; it does not recharge the local water table.

Stormwater is retained for too short a period to allow for mosquitoes to breed. A rain garden is not a bog garden. It remains relatively dry during the summer, and stays relatively wet during the fall and winter rain storms.

Rain Gardens big or small, they help us all!

http://msucares.com/lawn/landscape/sustainable/rain.html http://www.msucares.comhttp://www.environmentaleducatorsmississippi.org      http://www.msucares.comhttp://www.environmentaleducatorsmississippi.orghttp://www.msucares.comhttp://www.environmentaleducatorsmississippi.orgwww.riveraction.org       http://www.nrims.org   

Prepared by the East Central Chapter of the Mississippi Native Plant Society.