Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2005

Reclaim your rain with a rain garden

What if you can have a beautiful garden and, at the same time, conserve water, reduce your water bill and help protect our waterways? Sound difficult?

Having a well-watered flower garden does not have to be expensive. Nor do you have to ignore local or state restrictions on outdoor watering. All you need is a little bit of imagination and a rain garden.

The Clean Water Campaign has partnered with the Clayton County Water Authority and the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Service in Clayton to present a workshop on constructing a rain garden. This free “how to” workshop will take place Oct. 11 at 6:30 p.m. at the Clayton County Water Authority at 1600 Battle Creek Road in Morrow.

Dr. Rosemary Seymour, of the University of Georgia and the P2Ag program, will present the workshop. The workshop will consist of the purpose of a rain garden, the proper plants to use and include a practical method for constructing a rain garden.

An estimated 20 percent of water consumed by the average household is used outdoors. Rain gardens allow you to reduce your outdoor water use, keep a nice garden and save the money you would have spent on water to keep your landscape green. Rain gardens work by capturing run-off from your roof or drive way and diverting it to gardens and low-lying areas to slowly soak into the soil. After all, it’s your rainwater, why not use it? An added benefit is that rain gardens reduce the amount of storm water runoff and pollutants in the runoff that enter local streams.

Rain gardens also reduce peak storm flows, helping to prevent stream bank erosion and lowering the risk for local flooding. Rain gardens are beautiful natural landscape features that require less maintenance and fewer chemicals than lawns. A rain garden receives runoff water from roofs or other hard (impervious) surfaces such as driveways. The rain garden holds the water on the landscape so that it can be taken in by plants and soak into the ground instead of flowing into a street and down a storm drain or drainage ditch. The plants, mulch and soil in a rain garden combine natural physical, biological and chemical process to remove pollutants from runoff. Many pollutants will be filtered out and break down in the soil over time.

Registration for the workshop is required.  To register, visit www.cleanwatercampaign.com or call 404-463-3259.