You know how it is when you learn a new word that you don’t think you’ve ever heard before, and then suddenly you hear it allllll the time? Well that’s me and rain gardens right now. I recently learned about them at a session on using native plants in urban settings at the annual MN Shade Tree Short Course. And now it seems like I hear about them everywhere! The new edition of our neighborhood newspaper arrived the other day, and there was a front page article about rain gardens and green roofs. I had a meeting at the Minnetonka Public Works building yesterday and I parked my car and looked up to see that I had parked right in front of a rain garden, complete with information sign (it looked suspiciously similar to your average drainage ditch, but I bet in a couple of months it will kabloom with native wildfowers and grasses).

So having decided that we simply must have a rain garden of our own, I embarked on some research. To my delight, there was a lot of really great info out there, leading me to wonder how in the world a natural resources grad student such as myself could have made it this far without learning about this! The main benefit of a rain garden is that they filter stormwater runoff and reduce the amount of pollutants draining to lakes and streams, mitigating one of the main environmental problems in urban areas these days. But in addition to this, they help recharge groundwater, protect from flooding and drainage problems, provide habitat for birds, butterflies, and other beneficial insects, and they just plain look and smell pretty! Rain garden, will you marry me?

In Karen’s perfect world, our whole yard would be one giant rain garden, but for practical purposes I think we’ll start small. Regular Duo Team readers may recall that our back yard has had some drainage issues in the past. Granted, that was an extreme rain event. But even with regular storms, there’s pooling and general swamp-like conditions, resulting in Nate and I having to sort of hopscotch and curse our way from the back door to the garage in the morning. Improvements on the half-buried path from door to garage are high on my list of spring/summer goals as well, but if we could channel the water to a cutie little rain garden it could significantly improve our quality of life at the ole DT headquarters.

It turns out that there is this great Minneapolis Blooms program, which started holding FREE rain garden workshops last year. They held 18 workshops and expected about 300 people, and ended up having over 500 people attend and another 400 on a waiting list! This year they were able to offer 38 workshops. As soon as I read about it I went to sign up, only to find out that they have been full for some time. I’m bummed I don’t get to go to one this year, but how great is it that there is so much interest? They also apparently have rain garden interns who you can hire to come to your house for an on-site consultation for a mere $20! sweeeeet.

I was able to find some other workshops on Lawncare for Water Quality, offered by Friends of the Mississippi, which include rain gardens in the topics they cover, but have yet to find out if they too are already full. Even if they are, I feel like I have enough resources right now to sit down and bust out a plan. For one thing, my officemate has offered his assistance. He works at Kestrel Design Group, a private consulting firm that does ecological restorations and landscape architecture (and the ones who designed the green roof on the Phillips Eco Center, a seriously amazing green building on a former city brownfield, home of the Green Institute, and incidentally, only a few blocks from our house), and has some experience with rain gardens. I also have an arsenal of how-to guides from the internets, like this one and this one.

The main challenge will be, as usual, time. And the thorn in my side that is my research project. That’s right, it’s STILL not done, though it is crawling at a snail’s pace ever closer to the finish line. Some day very soon, I just know it…

PS – Holy links Batman! Can you handle it? I just gave you a reason to not work for the rest of the day. You’re welcome.

Nate and I recently embarked on our first landscaping endeavor at Duo Team Headquarters: planting bulbs! As a small tidbit of background, when we bought the house I was all psyched up to convert our entire yard into native Minnesota prairie grasses and flowers. And then pretty much as soon as we moved in and I surveyed the garden and the plants that we inherited from Amy (previous owner), I realized I didn’t know the first thing about outdoor plants (or indoor for that matter really). So I have revised my plans. I still hope to eventually line our front walkway and possibly fill that part between the sidewalk and the street with prairie goodness, but I now know I have to take baby steps to get there. Hence, baby step #1: Bulbs!

Since I was going to be in the neighborhood of El Depot de Casa, it was my task to buy the bulbs. I was excited about this, but as I walked out to the gardening section, I suddenly realized I had no idea what I was doing. My footsteps slowed. The Home Depot garden lady approached. "What can I help you with?" she asked. "I want bulbs!" I practically screamed at her. She stared at me for a moment, and then I told her I had no idea what I was doing. She smiled patiently and directed me to the bins and bins of bulbs, which happened to be right in front of me. I said "Oh, that’s what bulbs look like". She showed me the idiot-proof instructions on the bags, and I then spent an eternity agonizing over the different possibilities: crocuses, irises, hyacinths, tulips… I finally settled on what I thought could be a winning combination: $24 worth of purpley bluey crocuses (croci?), red, orange and yellow tulips, some solid color and some stripey, yellow narcissus, and all different kinds of white and yellow daffodils. I have since learned that narcissus is apparently a daffodil. No wonder they looked so similar. Whatever.

Since it now gets dark at like freakin 5pm up here in the north der hey, Nate and I decided to wake up early and plant them. We used the awesome claw garden tool that Ma and Pa Phillips recently gave to us (THANK YOU!) to loosen the dirt, and went to town! Nate put the crocuses/croci in the window box. There was previously an herb garden there, but we think we may just put all edibles in the garden in back. It was nice to have those smells wafting in the window though, but there’s still enough room that we could plant a few somethings in there with the flowers if we want.

We had read that we were supposed to cut back all perennials, so we did, somewhat nervously. On my Bruno walks I’ve been checking out other people’s plants, and I’ve seen a few things cut back, but not many. Lots of people plant with prairie grasses and flowers here, and none of that is cut back, which makes sense to me, but I wasn’t thinking of that when I cut our purple cone flowers. Probably should have left them. Well hopefully they’ll all be ok.

Nate also did the long section underneath the window box, as you can see in the photo above. There were some things planted around a tree by the street, so I put some in there. After my first three bulbs I realized I hadn’t been paying attention at all to what direction I was placing them in, so I had to go back and dig them up and replace them. duhhh. Got too excited and forgot to read the idiot-proof instructions. There are these pieces of wood that are all broken and crappy around the tree now, but I want to replace them with stones. Then I planted a bunch of bulbs in this corner section on the other side of the front door. I was putting daffodils and tulips in, and I was trying to alternate, but could not for the life of me keep track of what I had just put in, so it’s probably going to be just a big ol mess of flowers.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bruno, tied to the big tree in front, was wreaking havoc on Marcus the Carcass, a cheap yet awesome $13 light-up Halloween decoration I bought. Since Nate had spent quite some time making Marcus look oh so spooky, Bruno was subsequently put in his kennel and howled the rest of the time.

Nate put the last remaining bulbs in the back yard, and so far Bruno has not dug them up. Weee. So come spring we should have a wonderful surprise! It will be like getting a present, because we will have long forgotten the work we did, and we will be just coming out of seasonal depression and sooooo excited about seeing colors in our yard!