Creating Rain Gardens: Capturing the Rain for Your Own Water-Efficient Garden

With water being as scarce as it is and drought a common word throughout the U.S., using water from natural sources to the best of our ability seems logical. But is collecting rainwater for our own purposes actually doable? Creating Rain Gardens by Cleo Woelfle-Erskine and Apryl Uncapher shows how to do just that, with gorgeous ideas for landscaping to boot.

The chapters actually break down the building of rain gardens by steps: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Rain Garden Planning Guide; Designing Your Rain Garden; Building Your Rain Garden; Planting Your Rain Garden; Maintaining Your Rain Garden; and Your Rain Garden as Part of an Integrative Design. The introduction talks about how rain develops and why you should think about planting a rain garden in the first place. The epilogue focuses on how rain gardens make a positive impact on publicly or group maintained areas.

Multiple charts throughout the book make creating a rain garden easier: What Kind of Rain Garden Do I Want?; The Best Types of Rain Garden Basins for Various Soil Types; Calculating the Fraction of Rain that Runs Off;  How to Read a Rainfall Chart; Step-by-Step Digging Instructions; Calculating Runoff Volume and Rain Garden Dimensions. The case studies throughout the book also invite 'questions to spark the imagination.'

If you have ever thought of trying to capture what nature has given you free in the form of rainfall to helping you water your garden, Creating Rain Gardens would be a very good book to have. The pictures and illustrations provide examples and help you springboard ideas, and the many worksheets make planning and implementation easy.

Book Information:

• Creating Rain Gardens: Capturing the Rain for Your Own Water-Efficient Garden by Cleo Woelf-Erskine and Apryl Uncapher
• Timber Press; 2012
• ISBN13: 9781604692402

Disclosure: This ARC galley was provided by the publisher. Any opinions are my own.