Building a Rain Garden in the Pacific Northwest

Building a Rain Garden: Keeping Our Pacific Northwest Waters Clean.
In this 32-minute video, you'll learn the important steps to follow to site, design, construct, and maintain a beautiful landscape feature that captures and filters polluted runoff, helps prevent flooding, recharges our groundwater aquifers, and creates habitat for birds and butterflies. This video complements the WSU and OSU handbooks on creating rain gardens, expands on some of the ideas in those books, and includes helpful resources for homeowners.
Learn about the Rain Garden project at bit.ly/eJKbMz.

[@briangarrow448]

I spent the last 25 years working in the wastewater and storm water treatment fields. We have to slow the flow, people! Rain gardens, swales, appropriate plants all have places in fixing these issues. You can either do this or pay for expensive pumping stations and folks like me to maintain them. Every homeowner can do their part. Your municipality or drainage district should be encouraging these types of structures.

[@teresastaalcowley8521]

Thank you for this excellent rain garden video. I first began attending these rain garden workshops in the Spring of 2005 after I purchased my current home in March of the same year. The process of building my rain gardens and maintenance has been an enjoyable and healthy way to create an environment for wildlife, friends, family and neighbors to come to visit.

[@hubertmuhlbock9641]

Nobel prize should be waiting for you ! Great ideas, great work, and great IMPACT !!!!! Congratulations !

[@jeff824]

This worked great for us. We connected the downspout from house, planted a lot of Irises and whatnot. The irises were the best part as the tall green leaves would move with the breeze. Many birds to our feeder and small little pond.

[@LittleSpaceCase]

This is such a high quality, engaging and informative video. Deeply appreciate it

[@chunkychuck]

Watch the truck at 11:24! :)

[@alanhowitzer]

That's the way they drive in that town.

[@Beansie]

This would be an amazing addition to a Food Forest were it able to be made edible.

[@AMortalDothApproach]

Except that you'd be eating whatever is in the runoff

[@juanjosei.4963]

Great!! What happens in dry summers with those plants? Do you have to water them?

[@juanjosei.4963]

Now I ended the video so question answered!

[@justaquickpeak]

My neighbor did and when an insurance inspector came to asses his roof they told him because he was intentionally retaining diverted water runoff between the street curb and his foundation he had to purchase extra insurance due to increased risk of water damage. We filled it in that month and I got to keep all the rocks. It did look cool, especially with the lights he added.

[@majidaattaplantscare4582]

so nice

[@WSUCAHNRS]

Thank you! 🙂

[@wfloes5420]

I understand they water the cutie orange trees with Frac water?

[@barbararussell897]

Native Plants.. please watch 1 of Doug Tallamy's video on youtube

[@836matsunbri5]

Thank you :) I just watched a webinar of his and it was so educational. A great background knowledge for my upcoming internship

[@Aaron1883]

can a rain garden be established in a front yard ditch for a house in town?

[@rumyanakoprinkova3295]

Vegetable plants?

[@gdf5487]

God Save The Orca

[@Vache0espagnole]

If your soil doesn't drain there, you shouldn't make a rain garden, you should make a pond! Native clay + simple gley makes a pond that is very useful indeed for wildlife, birds, and also recharges the groundwater, since no pond is perfect and usually seep out the sides, watering adjacent plants.

[@Forseti2]

OMG :-D Imperial unit system - what a dumb way of measuring and converting :-D ... Divide by 27 to get bigger unit lol