Our first rain with the rain garden

We are experiencing an unusually hot and dry summer so I was wondering when we would see our rain garden in action. A thunderstorm at 5:00 am woke me up. I grabbed my boots and jacket and ran outside to check out the new downspout configuration. Sure enough, the rain barrel was already overflowing and water was going down the pebble creek bed. I was also surprised to how much water was going into the garden from elsewhere in the yard.

Here's a picture about one hour after it stopped raining (total precipitation of 31.8mm)

Rain garden one hour after a thunderstorm

We were relieved to see that we do not have a pond in our backyard. One problem we did not anticipate was the discovery of a lot of grass seeds in our rain garden. During the landscaping work, we decided to resow our lawn with a mix of grass and clover. 

Lesson learned: a rain garden should be dug when the rest of the lawn is mature and won't wash away into the garden.