Tag: Rain garden

The second rain garden

At the historic mansion site, the second rain garden is also a registered butterfly sanctuary. I had seen it on my personal walk-through a week ago. Yesterday it was confirmed as both the south rain garden and the butterfly sanctuary.

I spent hours yesterday evening pouring over a treasure – the schematics from the initial planting of the rain gardens, as well as the initial inventory/buy list. That was done in 2005, when the city took over the site, a new roof was put on the mansion, and the parking lot was put in. Makes sense – add a parking lot, offset runoff of that hard surface and potential chemicals, with rain gardens.

What went into the rain gardens was, as I expected, a lot of sedge and grasses. Other things too – honeysuckle, daylilies … From outward appearances it looks like the sedge and grasses have been very successful. Some research on sedge and other grasses yielded information that it is not just nectar that is needed in a butterfly garden. Caterpillars use the sedge and grasses environment. I need to dive a bit deeper on that to understand – should I then trim the sedge and grasses? They do seem a bit voluminous, but then maybe that is exactly what the caterpillars thrive on.

I fought myself on where to start, as the south rain garden/butterfly sanctuary is the closest to the entrance, but I really do want to see what survived in there for the butterflies before I start trimming there. It also looks like a lot of daylilies might be in there.

So the north rain garden gets a haircut first. The goal will be to start on the edges and gradually move in.

This will be a long-haul project, with layers of understanding and discovery. Perfect!

Rain garden thoughts

The house that we raised our children in had a pretty big back yard. There was definitely enough for me to have full and wide border gardens and still have room to, say, pitch a full-sized tipi and have room to play all around. Which we (humans and two big dogs) did.

In the far back corner, I called that my “wildflower garden”. It was the area of the yard that pitched down, and I quickly learned that all that sod we laid in the back yard was easy to mow everywhere but there. There it rutted up from the mower wheels, which was not the look I was going for. I decided to, yes, pull the sod out, turn it upside down where I didn’t plant things, plant daylilies and daffodils and multiple seed packets of coneflowers, and cover it with wood chips (I didn’t do mulch back then because I thought it decomposed too quickly). Oh, and the backdrop was a hedge I planted of cotoneasters. The bees loved that garden, and goodness knows I loved standing up on the deck and looking at that garden in its various bloom seasons. I knew nothing about rain gardens then, but now, researching rain gardens, my “wildflower garden” sure looked a lot like that. Admittedly, nothing grass-y though.

I am excited, and a little nervous, about working on the rain gardens at the historic mansion. The one I saw looks like this. She is expansive, and I am feeling a little like a kid on Christmas Eve, waiting for spring santa to show me what’s in there. I have had another garden experience like that, where I didn’t know what was “in there” and the discoveries were so fun! Work, but fun.

I am not very good at knowing grasses, sedge, wild ground cover, so I need to, I think, go little by little, making sure anything historic that needs to be preserved is identified, and then eek away at over-growth and gradually tame it – a bit. But carefully. Thinking no weed whippers. Thinking hand trimming. Thinking cool day for clean-up. Definitely tick spray. But wow what great potential!

Confirmed there is another rain garden as well, and I will meet with the garden committee members to get a tour and identify that area. Plus, they have a system for where garden waste goes, which is nice. Last garden I worked on that looked similar, I ended up hauling that away. But that is a different story.

Very excited to have a project like this. I will definitely have plenty to think about and plan and execute and maintain. It may be multi-year to work through. But what an honor to have the opportunity. These sites always awe-inspire me.