A Better Sense of Place
Search for "rain garden"
2014 March 31 (Mon)
The flowers are coming
Amazing what a little warmer weather and rain will do for wildflowers in the spring. It's only been two weeks, and I can definitely see a huge difference.
2014 March 18 (Tue)
Babies' first spring
The days have been getting warmer and sunnier. The rate of growth in the rain garden has increased lately, though the plants have generally been growing all winter too. The Chicken Yard sprouts have been growing much more slowly, but I'm not too worried. I can spot some flower buds starting to form, and I'm really looking forward to seeing them open so I can figure out what they even are. Looks like a bunch of Rudbeckia to me.
2013 October 20 (Sun)
Scarlet sage flowers
The scarlet sage are starting to flower. There are also a bunch of bundleflowers. I can't really identify much else right now, but this I know: the seeds did not take equally well to all parts of the rain garden. The places that are doing better are higher and sunnier. The low-lying areas and shady areas are very sparse. It's hard to tell which variable has the greater effect, but I think this will be a much longer term project than I had thought. It's going to take a while to figure out what will do well.
2013 October 6 (Sun)
PlantFest 2013
At the Hilltop Arboretum PlantFest, I bought two tulip trees and one American hornbeam for the front yard. For the back, I bought a maypop, inland seaoats, and a buttonbush. I only planted the three trees today since I already had places for them. The others, I'm not sure where they'll go yet. I'll probably put the maypop up against the fence somewhere. The other two will be in the rain garden.
2013 October 1 (Tue)
Plants for a rain garden
Another storm, more proof that it's a rain garden I built. I've started listing plants that would do well in all that water but still be ok when it's dry. My list has goldenrod, lyreleaf sage*, inland seaoats, buttonbush*, spiderwort, American beautyberry*, and Turk's cap. Depending on the price and availability, I might buy the ones with asterisks from the Hilltop Arboretum PlantFest on Saturday. Or I may just go with seeds and buy only trees (for my front yard plan).
2013 September 29 (Sun)
After the rains
The rain last weekend helped out some of the sprouts while killing others. In the first three pictures, you can see that those in the "highlands" survived while those in the "lowlands" perished. This has made me rethink my haphazard plan. All the low parts where water collects should be a a different sort of plant: those that can be flooded. I initially thought of horsetail (Equisetum hyemale), but it is said to be very aggressive. I still haven't figured it out.
2013 September 22 (Sun)
Rain garden realization
It occurred to me this evening that I don't have a "wetland fringe". I have a rain garden. I may have been too eager to have a one-stop solution (seed mix) that I didn't really consider that I'd need to do more research on this as well. What happens in the area in question is that it's mostly dry, but sometimes it rains a lot. The majority of the backyard drains to it during heavy rain, and it's now responsible for retaining the water and processing it in some way. I'm two weeks away from the Hilltop Arboretum Fall PlantFest, so I've got some research to do to figure out what native plants are adapted to dealing with "mostly shaded (except for one sunny part) and dry but sometimes flooded for 24 hours" conditions.
