How “green” Is Your Garden?
Like gardening? Interested in attracting birds and butterflies? Well, you can do all of this and help prevent stormwater from entering local streams. By creating a rain garden, you can direct water from your downspouts to your garden and reduce your own water use as a bonus!
A rain garden is an attractive landscaped area with native plants that don’t mind a summer rain. The rain garden is designed to naturally collect water that runs off your roof, driveway and other paved areas. It is a sustainable and economic way of dealing with rainfall as nature intended. Also, a rain garden slows down and reduces the volume of rainfall runoff before it enters the stormwater system.
I’m inviting you to join the Mid-Atlantic National Estuary Program in their campaign, Rain Gardens for the Bays! This unique campaign works closely with EPA Region 3, Partnership for the Delaware Estuary, Center for the Delaware Inland Bays, Maryland Coastal Bays, DE Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control and other organizations, to green our neighborhoods and protect our streams and bays.
By installing a rain garden, you are not only keeping rainwater on your property but you are saving time by lowering landscaping maintenance and doing your part to protect the environment at the same time.
Want double the water saving benefits? Connect a rain barrel to your downspout and use the collected water to keep your rain garden and other landscaping green and attractive to birds and bees.
For more information on how to create your very own rain garden visit Rain Gardens for the Bays
Have you installed a rain garden? If so, tell us about your experience and register your rain garden here. Haven’t installed one yet? Tell us why not, and if you would consider creating your very own rain garden.
Editor's Note: The opinions expressed in Greenversations are those of the author. They do not reflect EPA policy, endorsement, or action, and EPA does not verify the accuracy or science of the contents of the blog.
Great idea and great website! Let’s spread the word on this Campaign!
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This is a good solution to a big problem.
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I’ve always dreamed of owning a blog like you:)
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Nice job.
Thanks for the idea. Really i will try to keep my environment green.
This will motivate others to install rain garden.
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This is a great article! We normally catch our rain water in big balers and use it in our yard to save money on our water bill. But i think a water garden is a great idea. My husband and i are going to install our own water garden.
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This is great info about rain water collection. These days we try to be a “Green” friendly as possible. We actually capture the rain water from our downspouts to fill our pond and it works quite well. It easily saves us probably 10,000 gallons a year which adds up over time.
I’ve actually be interested in trying to capture some of our “Grey” water from the house and use it in the yard as well, but I haven’t quite found an easy way to accomplish my goal.
Anyway, great info here!
Jon
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