What's in our rain garden and how does water get there?

The landscape guys are gone. We now have a fully functional rain garden. We did a bit of creative rewiring of the downspouts so that they both feed in the rain garden. 

One downspout feeds into a rain barrel. So why do we need a rain garden if we have a rain barrel? Well, in our experience, the rain barrel fills up in a few minutes of heavy rain so we felt like we still needed better stormwater management from this downspout. The overflow of the rain barrel feeds into the large pipes that pour into the dry creek bed that leads to the rain garden.

Downspout configuration

The plants have been planted in a mixture of compost and normal soil. These plants have been selected with the help of a botanist at VertCité and purchased at Aiglon Indigo.  They are indigenous plants that can survive in humid and dry conditions.

Plants in our rain garden, week 1

In the middle we have a spotted joe-pyeweed (Eutrochium maculatum), which is expected to grow very tall (2 meters) and reach a diameter of about 1 meter.

Around the spotted joe-pyeweed, we have four swamp milkweeds (Asclepias incarnata). They are expected to reach about 1 meter in height and hopefully we will be able to attract monarch butterflies this fall.

Scattered around in the garden we also have 2 Canada anemones (anemone canadensis), 4 iris versicolor (those are the ones with the long straight leaves) and 3 wild bergamot (monarda fistulosa).The wild bergamot plants are supposed to spread by rhizomes so it will be interesting to see if they will end up taking over the entire garden.

We have also transplanted a rhubarb plant and an asparagus patch that were growing in pots in order to keep our hardy perennials in the same garden. The rhubarb and the asparagus are on the edge of the garden to make it easier to reach for harvesting next spring. Surprisingly, the rhubarb is not tolerating the move very well but rhubarb being rhubarb, it will surely thrive for years to come. 

We have also sowed some German chamomile seeds directly on the edge of the garden. Our household drinks a lot of chamomile tea so hopefully we will be able to grow our own.