CJ's Rain Garden
Potential site in the back corner of the lot - the blue line shows the edge of the lot. There is a storm sewer drain in the middle of the back yard on the property line (about at the end of the blue line in front of the stick). This site was graded as a swale - the neighbor's property behind slopes down to the swale. the neighbor's property to the left (see next picture) is flat.
I would like to put the garden here to collect the water and provide habitat for wildlife as well as provide some privacy screening (to hide the items the neighbor dumps in his extra lot - pile of dirt). So would like some taller grasses that move in the wind (there is a pretty consistent west wind) and look nice silhouetted in the sun (the back yard faces West). I don't want any tall trees or bushes that would obscure the view of the sunset. Anything planted here will have to survive the winter winds as they are pretty brutal as there is no real wind break on this side of the lot.
The storm sewer drain along the property line
There is a pop up put in by the original landscaper which is fed from four down spouts - 2 from our house and 2 from my neighbor to the left. This would obviously need to be moved. There is currently water in the storm sewer and this part of the back yard is a lot of clay although we haven't had any standing water back there. Fortunately, the sprinkler heads for the back yard are at least 15 feet from the property line/sewer.
Comments (14)
6 years ago- 6 years ago
A couple concerns came to light from the permeability/sizing data. The rain garden needs to be 519 sq feet to accommodate our 2 downspouts and my neighbor's 2 downspouts and the fact that the bottom 12 inches of the backyard is solid clay. If I want to do just our roof then the garden needs to be 298 sq feet however, our popup is on the right side of the large drain and the neighbor's is on the left (see picture below) and am not sure how to direct our popup to the garden site, on the left, as it will have to cross over or under the neighbors drain/popup.
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Another question - do I need to be concerned about the drainage from my 60 feet of lawn and my back neighbor's lawn? My husband checked the slope and the neighbor's yard to the left slopes to the left so doesn't drain in to our yard but our neighbor to the back his yard definitely is higher and slopes to the swale which leads to the large drain on the property line between out yards.
Back neighbor's yard.
Our lawn (about 7% slope) to the back drain (facing from the drain to the house).
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Backyard drawing - back of house, patio & deck with existing planting bed at bottom left and potential rain garden at bottom right (sized 3 ways). Note the scale is one square is 2 feet by 2 feet. Couldn't fit it using one square at one foot.
Have several sprinkler heads in the back yard (black dots) which need to be worked around. Dark line at the bottom is the property line.
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Cindy SedlakOriginal Author