Raingardens

I work with the topography and the natural resources present on your land to skillfully develop a natural garden that brings you closer to nature as well as meeting your practical needs.

Incorporating rainwater into your garden raises the water level and ideally provides easier and longer access to water once the plants are established. Diversionary swales and French drains can capture the rainwater falling on the garden or on your roof and redirect it to create a swale, dry creek bed or wetlands garden. 

A client called me to put in a French drain with a pump. The oak floors in her house were buckling because every winter a pond formed below her house. Her house was located in a natural wetlands area, so we contoured the land around her house and put in a wetlands garden of mostly native plants, surrounded by a berm of drought tolerant plants. 

In the winter she had a flourishing wetlands garden of native iris, leopard lillies, creek monkeyflowers and grasses. By late spring it was dry, so she had no mosquitoes. She had flowering plants almost all year long. She followed the change in seasons with the native plants - enjoying what would come up next.