What is a Rain Garden?
A rain garden is a garden of native shrubs, perennials, and flowers planted in an area that is generally formed on a natural slope. Each garden is designed to soak in and hold rainwater runoff that flows from road reserves, driveways, or your front lawn.
Compared to traditional lawns, rain gardens allow more water to soak into the ground and effectively remove nutrients, chemicals, and sediments from the rainwater runoff.
A rain garden is not a water garden, pond, or wetland. In fact, a rain garden is actually dry most of the time and typically only holds water during and following a rainfall event.
Why do we have Rain Gardens in Elavale?
Each time it rains, water runs off sealed surfaces, such as roofs or driveways and collects pollutants such as dirt, fertiliser, chemicals, oil, garbage, and bacteria along the way. This contaminated water then enters storm drains and flows directly to nearby streams and ponds.
But, in Elavale our rain gardens are designed to collect rainwater runoff, allowing the water to be filtered by vegetation and drain into the soil, recharging groundwater aquifers. These processes filter out pollutants to ensure the water entering our storm drains is as clean as possible.
What makes them different?
In the design of a rain garden, soil is not used but instead tillage, compost and sand that should help to increase water infiltration.
Our Elavale rain gardens are constructed along the side of the road and collect rainwater runoff from your lawn, roof, and driveway. Once water is collected in the rain garden, infiltration may take up to 48 hours after significant rainfall.
Each rain garden incorporates native vegetation, so no fertiliser is needed, and after the first year, maintenance is usually minimal.
What benefits do Rain Gardens provide to my community?
• Improves water quality by filtering out pollutants
• Look appealingly
• Preserves native vegetation
• Provides localised stormwater and flood control
• Attracts beneficial birds, butterflies, and insects
• Easy to maintain
To learn more about the charm of Elavale’s neighbourhood visit our About Page here.