Rain Gardens are an ornamental garden that is designed to hold a few inches of water when it rains. You can build one in your yard to receive roof downspout and hard surface runoff. A municipal rain garden is built in the street boulevard and holds some of the rainfall runoff from the street pavement. When full (usually just a few inches) any additional runoff just continues on down the street. Gardens are designed to allow the water to soak in quickly, within a day at most. With enough rain gardens, we can improve the water quality of our local streams, lakes and rivers.
VIDEO: Rain garden care.
The city encourages the use of rain gardens on both public and private lands.
• Rain gardens on Crystal street reconstruction projects: When people talk about Crystal's rain gardens, they are usually talking about the gardens that were created as part of street reconstruction projects. Since 1995, the city has installed numerous resident and municipal rain gardens as part of street reconstruction projects.
• Installing a rain garden on your own. Crystal encourages residents that are not on street reconstruction projects to consider installing a rain garden on their own. Most yards have room for a rain garden that can collect roof runoff. Some residents are also able to collect driveway runoff or runoff from a slope.
• Rain gardens for developments and businesses. Crystal encourages developers and businesses to consider rain gardens when determining how best to manage runoff from their site. Several developers and businesses have created beautiful rain gardens in our community.
Click below for more information:
Full Sun Rain Garden
Part Sun Rain Garden
Shade Rain Garden
Shrubs Rain Garden