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Rain Garden Class

18 years ago

The Scott County Master Gardeners are hosting a rain garden workshop.

Saturday, October 8th, 9:00 am to 11:30 am.

Quite frankly, this is not going to be a shallow, fluffy little talk. We will be onsite of three, entirely different types of rain gardens. You won't just be told good information; you will be shown solid information that you can physically look at and actually touch. Photos of the process will be provided by the guy who did the work. He will be available for any questions.

The first third of the presentation will be given by Ray Wolf, who works for the National Weather Service. He will be leading the technical portion of the presentation. Ray has given several presentations for the Certificate Program of The Partners In Horticulture and has consistently been one of the most popular instructors.

The second third of the program will be the step-by-step installation process showing before, during and after photos. The "how to" aspect be addressed as well as providing answers to all of the "why" questions. Common mistakes and oversights will also be explored.

The final portion of the class will be spent out in the rain gardens themselves.

This class is free and open to the public. The only thing that I do ask is that a call be given to the Scott County Extension Office to sign up (563-359-7577) -- just so we have an idea of how many will be attending. However, if someone forgets to sign up, they will not be turned away.

The site of the class will be at my new home in Walcott, Iowa -- 435 W. Parkview Drive. Walcott is a small town, ten minutes west of the Quad Cities on I-80, just south of the huge, Iowa 80 Truckstop. It is a small little town (Trust me, you can't get lost.) and my house is located in the far, northwest corner of town in the new subdivision.

I hope to see you then.

Dan Mays

435 W. Parkview Drive

Walcott, Iowa 52773

ph. 563-284-9025

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Comments (3)

ironbelly1
Original Author
18 years ago
The class was a great success. We had 20 students including one landscape architect and the administrator of the Rain Garden Incentive Program from Rock Island, Illinois. It is great to see so many people interested in assuming social responsibility for the storm water that their property is generating. It was fun outlining some effective ways to address that problem while also increasing the beauty of one's property.

IronBelly
uicricket
18 years ago
Ironbelly,

Glad to hear you had a great turn out! I wasn't able to find anyone to work for me so I couldn't attend. Just wanted to thank you for giving everyone here the opportunity to attend and learn more. Do you have a couple of books you can recommend on the subject? I'd like to learn more.

Cricket
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The photo labeled "two" with no snow... If you dig a gravel walkway from the driveway down to the rain garden location to force the water to the desired location the water will not affect the basement. Curve the walkway all the way up into the corner by the garage door, or use something very densely rooted as an edging to deflect the water to the walkway. Siberian or Japanese Iris work well for this,or even Liriope which is evergreen.
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There are articles that give a lot of detail on building a rain garden. HERE is one. The size of a rain garden depends on two things the square footage of roof drainage and your soil type. You need a larger rain garden if your soil is clay than if it is silt or sand. For instance, one downspout contains runoff from 200 sq ft of roof and the soil is clay. Multiply 200 x .43 to get the rain garden size of 86 sq ft. Of course, a larger rain garden gives more containment during heavy or prolonged rain, and also allows greater plant diversity. Many sites recommend 150 sq ft. Note that many sites recommend digging deeper and generously mixing compost with the soil so it will hold more water. Ultimately, a rain garden is a shallow depression or a bermed area that catches runoff and allows it to soak in. After a heavy or prolonged rain event check to see if water flowed out anywhere. As long as the flow spreads out over lawn everything is OK. It's only if the overflow cuts into a berm or forms a runnel that you would add rocks or gravel to alleviate the erosion.
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ironbelly1
Original Author
18 years ago
Cricket,

It would have been wonderful if you could have made it. I think we are just on the cusp of these practices being much more widely implimented; even on an institutional and municipal scale. Locally, St. Ambrose University in Davenport, is doing some very creative things to address some very old, lingering storm water issues that have plagued their campus (and everyone down stream from them) for years. I also hear about good things at Grinnell College. The folks in Iowa City are starting to also make some inroads. I keep hearing about their "Peninsula Project".

The concept is quite simple: use gravity to transport the storm water already collected by your gutters and coax it into an area where it has a bit of time to soak in. The tricky part (as with any garden) is making it visually appealing throughout the entire year.

I constructed three entirely different types of rain gardens to experiment with planting schemes -- the technical stuff is pretty straightforward. One of the planting schemes was a recommended planting design straight out of the book. Without a doubt, in the "looks department", it comes in dead last -- not ugly but it won't bubble your hormones either. In talking with the architect and his associate designer after class, we all concluded that the designs coming from the "experts" use far too many different plants. When one limits the pallet to perhaps five or six different plants and creates drifts, the effect is much more pleasing. I can show that principle when comparing my own gardens.

Anyway, the best information on this topic will not be found in books but rather in a very nice, 32 page booklet put out by the University of Wisconsin. I ordered these and handed them out at class. However, the very same booklet is online in PDF format, which anyone can download for free. It is non technical and easy to understand with lots of great pictures and diagrams to help one understand. It was created expressly for the average home owner.

IronBelly

Here is a link that might be useful: Rain Garden manual

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