Rain gardens

This article is about planted installations designed to capture surface runoff in an amended soil.
For more highly engineered systems, see Bioretention cells.

Overview

Rain gardens capture roof, lawn and driveway runoff from low to medium density residential lots. These can be simple gardens constructed by the homeowner as a retrofit, or they can be professionally designed into a residential development.

Rain gardens are ideal for:

• Capturing the flow from disconnected downspouts
• Community design/build projects for raising awareness about stormwater capture and functional landscapes

The fundamental components of a rain garden are:

• An amended soil mix
• Suitable planting

Additional components may include:

• A splash pad of rocks to prevent the downspout flow from eroding the soil
• An overflow channel to another are of garden

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Planning Considerations

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Design

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Incentives and Credits

In Ontario

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  Schematic illustrating the components of a rain garden.

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  Disconnected downspout routing water into a rain garden.

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See Also

• Bioretention cells
• Downspout disconnection

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External Links

• RainScapeTO

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The portion of water precipitated onto a catchment area, which then flows as surface discharge from the catchment area past a specified point.

Water from rain, snow melt, or irrigation that flows over the land surface.

A lot level bioretention cell designed to receive and detain, infiltrate and filter runoff, typically used for discharge from downspouts.