GardenTok Is All About Rain Gardens Now—Here Are the Key Features to Consider

Rain gardens are sprinkling back into yard trends this year, due to uncommonly warm winters across the globe.

When your garden faces onslaughts of wet weather, you could find yourself with a soggy yard (or worse, a flooded one). Rain gardens are designed to withstand heavy rain, and even better, help disperse the extra water throughout the rest of your yard. This protects your plants that can’t withstand too much water.

The idea behind a rain garden is to essentially create a storm drain out of a garden bed. You make a slight hole or depression in a central area of your yard, and this encourages the water to "drain" toward it. The depression then releases water into the soil overtime, gradually dispersing it tot the plants throughout your garden.

Interest in the benefits of this versatile garden has grown on GardenTok throughout the last year—a video featuring one found in a parking lot has gotten nearly 100,000 views, and this explainer from @robertmberger has racked up over 1 million.

To create your own rain garden, you’ll first need to determine how and where the largest amounts of water gather in your yard. If you have gutters that run off into the soil, a sloping yard that pitches rain toward the bottom, or areas where large puddles already naturally form, keep these areas in mind while planning.

Because a rain garden needs to be able to dry out quickly, you should try to find a spot in your garden that has dry soil (basically, don’t build your rain garden in an already soggy area). Depending on the type of rain runoff you’re trying to mitigate, you can redirect water toward your rain garden in a number of ways: using PVC pipes, creating small depressed pathways, or building your rain garden into a slope.

Rock pathways are one of the more common ways to help water find its way: Simply create a wide, depressed pathway of rocks from the top of a slope or wet spot that leads directly into your rain garden. 

A traditional rain garden features three planting "zones" that vary based on how wet the soil gets when it rains. The middle section of the rain garden is typically the deepest and floods with water the most, so you should choose plants that thrive in wet conditions for this spot. The second layer of plants won't end up quite as wet, but they still need to be able to survive in wet conditions. The third zone of plants should stay relatively dry.

Go with native plants for your rain garden—not only are they naturally equipped to survive the climate you’re living in, but they also better support the soil and wildlife in your garden. Native plants also tend to create stronger root systems, which leave more space in the soil to give the water a place to go when it floods.

Before building your rain garden, make sure you’re far enough away from your home (and your neighbors', for that matter). They can cause the foundation of your home to rot if they sit too close to it. Make sure you can safely dig up the area you’re planning on transforming into a rain garden before getting started.