Integrated Water Management Using A Rain Garden

When winter comes around we tend to spend a great deal of time inside with a nice hot drink looking out at the frost covered grass, foggy skies and endless rain. While it's not really an inspiring time to be thinking about being out in the garden, there are so many ways you could be using all this rain to your garden's advantage while helping out the environment at the same time!

Our innovative solutions in water capture and conservation mean the majority of our landscapes require no mains water to keep plants healthy and alive throughout the harsh winter. If you are looking for a sustainable way to use rain capture more effectively at your house, why not build a rain garden? This is a simple way to help the environment while also providing a self-watering garden for your backyard.

A rain garden is a specifically prepared garden designed to receive and filter water run off from roofs or hard surfaces such as driveways, roads or paving. A rain garden can be a planter box, positioning it to collect water from a disconnected down pipe or rainwater tank overflow.

The rain garden planter box is made using a bottom layer of gravel and soil, a slotted pipe and a top layer of mulch or gravel. The rain garden works by allowing the water to percolate through these layers, slowing down the waters entry into storm water and reducing storm water capacity in addition to filtering the water from harsh pollutants and preventing these from entering our waterways.

Once your rain garden is established with plants (we prefer natives like Anigozanthos sp.- Kangaroo Paw), it will remain low maintenance as it will not require you to water or fertilise it in order for it to grow!

So what are you waiting for this winter? Don't let all that rainwater go to waste! Build your rain garden now and help improve our precious waterways!

If you have questions about building a rain garden, contact our office or visit  http://ow.ly/mx2Kk for more information on water wise solutions!