Rain Garden Plan Complete

The design for my rain garden is complete! As I mentioned in my first rain garden post, my city offered a $500 grant for residents to install a rain garden this summer. In order to apply for the grant, I had to attend a workshop and two design sessions. Professional designers helped with every step of designing my rain garden, and I couldn't be happier. 

Coming up with the final design was much more complex than I anticipated. There are a lot of factors involved in planning a rain garden, I'm so glad I had professionals to help me. 

The first thing we had to do for the rain garden design sessions was create a detailed drawing of our property. I started out with the lot survey I got from the city. This map shows me the dimensions of every part of my lot and the house. Having this was a huge help and saved me tons of time. 

Lot survey from the city

Then I had to draw it out on graph paper, and add more details. Here are the basic steps I had to follow to create my drawing:
  
Step 1: Using graph paper, draw the lines of your house and property (easy once I had the lot survey).
Step 2: Add buildings, trees, landscaping features, gardens, hard surfaces (driveway, sidewalks...etc), gutter locations and arrows to represent the direction of the flow of water off the roof.
Step 3: Add land slopes to the map and the direction the water flows through the yard.
Step 4: Add any play areas, pathways or other activity areas (where you wouldn't want a garden)
Step 5: Identify sun exposure

What you end up with is a very messy looking map...

Rain garden planning map

Once we decided on the best spot to put the rain garden, the next step was to complete the design of the garden. We measured the area and drew the basic shape on the graph paper. Then the designer drew in the details of the garden, and helped me pick out the plants. Here is the completed design...

Rain garden design

I'm excited to have the design completed and approved. I didn't have much time to pick out plants; the design had to be completed quickly in order to meet the grant application deadline. This design only uses six different types of plants, and I like more variety than that. They said I don't have to stick with the plants shown in the design. Once we get to the planting phase, I can plant whatever I want.  

Here's where my rain garden will go, in front of the rock wall...

Location of rain garden

When we installed the rock wall, we added drainage tile underneath. The drainage tile comes out in the bottom right corner. We designed a dry creek bed into the rain garden, so the drainage pipe will flow into the rain garden. It will also be graded on that side so the water from the top of the hill (behind this garden, not shown in this picture) will also flow into the rain garden. The bulk of the water that flows through our yard comes from this side of the yard. 

The next step is for them to come out and stake the area and give us instructions on how to construct it. Hopefully that will get done in the next week or so, then we can start digging. 

I really like the final design, it will go great in front of our rock wall. What do you think?