What is a Rain Garden?

A rain garden is an attractive garden with a special purpose; to reduce the amount of stormwater entering our beautiful Great Lakes.

A rain garden is constructed as a place to direct the rain from your roof or driveway,  and is landscaped with perennial plant species native to our region. Rain gardens have loose, absorbent soils; a shallow, bowl-shaped ponding area; and are made to resemble the function of a natural meadow or light forest ecosystem.

Why a Rain Garden?

A rain garden is a natural way for you to help solve our stormwater pollution problems, help recharge groundwater, and protect our water resources. A rain garden keeps rain on your property, where it naturally belongs. By creating a rain garden, you can help improve water quality in local streams, rivers, and lakes. You can use rain the way nature intended, instead of throwing this resource away.

In addition, rain gardens are attractive landscaping features. They use Michigan's native species of plants that are adapted to our region, and can be low maintenance while providing habitat for native wildlife and butterflies.

Why is Stormwater a Problem?

We tend to think that large industrial polluters cause most water pollution, but this is not the case. We are the real culprits. Studies by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have determined that up to 70% of the pollution in our surface waters is carried there by stormwater runoff. Some studies show that about 50% of such pollution comes from individuals and homeowners, due to yard care, yard waste, and chemical pollution from household activities.

But Rain is Natural and Clean, Isn't It?

Rain is clean when we get it. It's what we do to it afterward that causes the problems. When it rains, water runs off of our roofs, parking lots, streets, and lawns, instead of soaking into the soil the way it did before development. This water, along with everything it picks up along the way, ends up in storm sewers and ditches that discharge to streams, rivers and lakes. Salt from roads, pet waste, lawn nutrients, spilled gas, oil and other pollutants are all washed into the local waters.

In addition to carrying pollution, the stormwater runoff can be warm, causing a pulse of warmer water to flow down the stream. In a natural system, water enters a stream through a slow and steady release from groundwater. Groundwater has a fairly cool temperature, which allows water to hold more oxygen.  Many sensitive creatures such as trout cannot survive in a stream with fluctuating and warmer temperatures

While groundwater release is slow and fairly steady, stormwater runoff occurs all at once. The large volumes of warm water flushing down a stream cause erosion and flooding, carry dam-forming debris, and scour the stream bed.

By creating a rain garden on your property, you can keep rain on your property where it naturally belongs. You can help be part of the solution to stormwater pollution. In addition, you gain a lovely garden.