This week we're featuring a local raingarden designed and installed by Tony and Jen Clyde in midtown Tulsa. I've been talking with Tony about his raingarden plans for a couple of years now. Their garden was planted in the summer of 2008, so I was curious as to how it was coming along. The answer is, "Great!", as you can see from these photos.
Tony designed this raingarden to address runoff from one section of their home encompassing about 170 square feet of roof. The location sits off the southwest corner of the home, in full sun, and is just off a stone sitting area. To begin his garden design, Tony performed a permeability test at the proposed raingarden location and found he had loamy soil with good infiltration.
The roof section selected for this garden has two downspouts that were disconnected from the storm sewer and rerouted, as shown in these photos. The first shows the downspout connection. The second photo shows the inlet into the raingarden.Tony then began to dig out the raingarden. He excavated about 1.5 cubic yards of dirt, which has since been used in other yard projects. The garden is kidney-shaped, measuring about 4.5' x 10', or 45 square feet, and is 6" deep.
As an overflow outlet, a rut left by a utility truck was purposefully not filled in. The rut is barely noticeable in the grassy yard but functions regardless, channelling water out of the raingarden and into the street (and storm sewer) during high rainfall events. The overflow is located in the bottom left corner of this photo. Every raingarden needs an overflow.
The garden was then planted with facultative wetland plants - that is, plants that can handle periodic flooding. For this garden, Tony selected swamp milkweed, swamp verbena, sawtooth sunflower, and leadplant. The plants were obtained from Pine Ridge Gardens in Arkansas, which specializes in native plant materials. The plants were shipped directly to his home and cost about $110. To finish it off, Tony selected a good cypress mulch.When I visited, there were numerous different species of butterflies and bees present. Although the plants were not chosen to attract pollinators, it is certainly effective. The garden looks like a natural, but planned, part of the landscape.
I asked Tony about comments from neighbors. He said the most common have been regarding the garden's attractiveness. But he did tell about one visitor who remarked, "You know your pond doesn't hold water." Some things take a while to catch on. :)
