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.

Schematic illustrating the components of a rain garden.

Disconnected downspout routing water into a rain garden.

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

See Also

• Bioretention cells
• Downspout disconnection

External Links

• RainScapeTO

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.