Hi Joni, I know this is an old post, but how did your rain garden turn out? :)

Hey Kaitlyn, the commenter above is correct that you should probably check with your DPW office to see about permission if the proposed site is in the right-of-way (community property). Many Rouge municipalities would support you, sometimes with conditions, so the spot stands a good chance of working. However, is that a pipe I see right where the black line begins? If so, it might make sense to plan TWO rain gardens, one upstream somewhere of the swale that takes that pipe water, and then overflows into the swale. I'm a fan of making several small gardens rather than one big garden.

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.

(MRG Days 4/5) Here's the final layout we decided on. There was some compromise on using familiar/easily-accessible plants, namely the catnip. The overall goal with the layout is to give the best view to the house (to the west/left, see site map in previous post). The plants are generally arranged short-to-tall so that everything is visible from the house (and dry-to-wet to account for the site moisture). Water conveyance is shown in posts 2 & 3, all overland from roof -> ground -> across lane -> rain garden/turf. We're intentionally not filling the entire space for 2 reasons: 1. We want to see how much this garden helps with the wetness in this area and how the wetness affects the plants. This isn't the only garden on the property - if this addresses the standing water, then expanding it will be lower priority. 2. We want to let the plants mature and fill in the area naturally-ish and adding plants from other gardens.