Rain Garden Design Research

With the development of once forested land into housing communities and cities with impervious surfaces, stormwater management has become an issue of destruction and cost. Fresh rainwater falls onto roof tops, lawns, parking lots, and streets, and is immediately conveyed to underground storm pipes. The rain, mixing with chemicals from the streets or sewage waste, is then dumped into streams or filtered at water treatment plants.

This cycle is destructive to natural habitats and costly to cities. The rainwater could be collected where it falls, to be reused for watering vegetable gardens, flushing toilets, or simply for recharging groundwater aquifers. Biofiltration cells or rain gardens, vegetated detention basins, green roofs, and rain barrels are all options for collecting and harvesting rain water in order to keep water on site and to avoid further destroying streams or incurring unnecessary costs.

Stormwater basins, or rain gardens, are failing nationwide due to the lack of understanding of how to match native plants to the basin soils and moisture profile.

We are conducting primary research into naturally occurring stormwater detention basins and participating in several rain garden trials.  The findings from our plant community research are playing a direct role in understanding how to design and build a rain garden that not only works properly but looks good doing it.

Get in touch with us to find out how our experience and research findings relate to your stormwater detention basin or rain garden project.