I have lately become obsessed with rain gardens, and one of my key gardening projects this year will be to plant one in my back yard. To learn more about the process, I attended a lecture about rain gardens on Thursday night, and I found out that in suburban landscapes, around 30% of rainfall can be lost as runoff. In highly urbanized settings, that number rises to 55%. Ouch.

I was pleased to discover that the site I've chosen should work well. It's a natural depression in my yard near a downspout, but the gutter usually just overflows directly into the depression, bypassing the downspout altogether (that's another issue entirely). My first task is to perform a "coffee-can test," for which I will dig a 6-8 inch hole (about the size of a coffee can), fill it with water, and monitor how quickly it is absorbed. The goal is for the water to be gone within 24 hours, which I think will happen, but I do garden in the most pernicious clay, so we'll see. 

In a couple weeks I will remove the sod and shape the depression into an oval, roughly about 8 inches deep. I will probably need to amend the soil with some sand to improve the drainage. I'm a little nervous about the digging; will I flood my yard if I do it wrong? Not likely, but I find it so much easier to add plants to the landscape rather than remove soil and sod. I learned that the plants I've planned to use are good choices. I'm thinking Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pensylvanica), cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis), swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) and golden alexander (Zizia aurea), probably with some other sedges thrown in, so to speak. Will this rain garden change the world? No, but at least it will look better than the muddy, barren puddle that's been driving me crazy for too long. And it just might cut down on that 30% figure. Now, where's that coffee can...

—Rose Rankin