Does anyone know anything about installing rain gardens? We've been installing them in New Orleans to help combat some of the minor flooding that occurs, but would love to learn what other people are doing or at least bounce ideas off of someone.
Rain Gardens
Boy, you might pose this over on the florida gardening forum, might be the only other place that can relate :(
Here is a link for rain gardens in a northern climate.
http://ohiowatersheds.osu.edu/trythis/trythis-5-2005.html
There is a big push up here to include them in new development and even retrofit them into existing developments. I don't know too much about it except that where I live the local municipality is installing one in a park and instituting green parking for a new bldg. along with it. Here runoff is becoming a big problem with the odd sudden heavy rains. Too many WM parking lots with acres of ashpalt. So they want to try to return as much rain water to rivers and streams through the soil rather than through the sewers to treatment plants. Sounds good.
Wow! that's pretty cool! I hope it is successful.
Rain gardens are wonderful!
If you can add a rain garden, do! Especially in places like Arizona. One of the coolest things is when a house is built, you can direct the water from the roofs to rain gardens. :) I don't have any pics, but they can be very beautiful. You have to plant plants that can stand massive fluctuations in water, and have an area that can hold runoff from a huge cloudburst without overflowing.
Agriculture extension here got a small grant for demonstation rain gardens. We need it both for our aquifer, which is rock and being depleted rapidly by well drilling, and for places downstream, like Charlotte. We are at the headwaters of a number of river systems. Rain gardens decrease run-off and help recharge the aquifer. If the aquifer isn't recharged, our rivers will disappear, as they have begun to in places like yours, azreno!
Uh, OK, what you described is not even possible here. When we do get rain it's a floodlike rain, there's no such thing as containing that much water and our fluctuations in water compared with the heat here are simply not things plants can deal with. I believe the higher elevations here in AZ would have great success with that, and quite frankly they need to do it. But down here in the PHX it would just be silly.