How storing water and creating boggy spaces can support our wildlife, rivers and reduce flood risk – one garden at a time.
Adapting your garden to a world experiencing more intense rainfall and increased chances of prolonged dry spells, can help your green space withstand extremes. It also adds to a boggier, wilder future, sustaining resilient rivers, landscapes and towns.
Speaking to Alan, our Technical Specialist, and creator of his very own rain garden, we’re sharing his advice on how to get started.
Play it small
If you’re on a budget or don’t have the space, even creating a little more space to store water can have a positive impact.
You could:
- Do nothing – and let your grass grow. This allows roots to grow deeper. If you’d like to take things further, you could introduce deep-rooting plants to your grass mix. Bees, bugs and butterflies will also benefit from a more diverse habitat.
- Plants to consider:
Chicory, Lucerne, Sainfoin, Cocksfoot, Sheep’s parsley, Burnet, Yarrow, Plantain are good deep-rooting options to introduce. - Keep it really simple and put out a bucket or pot and use rainwater to water your plants which much prefer rainwater over chemically treated tap water.
- Introduce a water butt – water butts are a fantastic and simple way to reduce flood risk, save water for dry spells and water your garden plants.
Overall, water butts are low maintenance. You might like to add a droplet of vegetable or olive oil to keep mosquitoes from laying their eggs if it becomes a problem and use it regularly to ensure algae doesn’t build up.
Go bigger
Going bigger may require some material to help bring nature-based solutions into your garden.
Introduce a mini pond
- Ponds come in all sizes from helmet-sized to ditch-the-pool-and-swim-with-the-frogs.
Starting small, you’ll need lime-free gravel. Look out for pond gravel if you’re unsure, oxygenating plants, rocks, woody materials and rainwater will be enough to get you started. Take a look at this guide to help you choose the right plants. A guide to native pond plants | WWT - A small container, a barrel lined with pond liner, a small plastic container are all options to consider for a mini pond.
In your garden, look for a semi-shaded area with not too much leaf litter and consider shallow ingress or egress points are enough to get you started. - Have a look at this video to get started.
Get rid of concrete and/or astro turf
Do you have an area in your garden that’s paved but doesn’t need to be?
Removing concrete or other materials that keep surfaces sealed, can create more space for rainwater drainage and wildlife. Astro turf can also mean that microplastics and other chemical pollutants enter our rivers, often without filtration.
Before you get started:
- Consider where your pipes lay to avoid disturbance
- Think about where rainwater flows to avoid erosion and messy runoff. You might want to consider a buffer or a tiered approach, where fills in one tier and eventually drains into the next.
- Consider whether the materials need machinery and whether a skip may be necessary
Go BIG
Whether it’s in a planter or a boggy corner in your garden, disconnecting your drainpipe and putting in a planter, is a simple way to use rainwater and reduce pressure from chronically overwhelmed drainage infrastructure.
Bear in mind, disconnected fall pipes into planters/ponds or bog gardens need an exceedance route back into the drain. If they already discharge to the ground rather than a drain then there is no need to find a drain as there probably is not one. Any feature in the ground ought to be at least 2m from a building with the land not sloping towards any building.
- Create a planter
See this handy guide to learn more:
How to Create a Rain Garden Planter – Groundwork - Create a bog garden
See this handy guide to learn more:
Bog gardens / RHS Gardening - Create a pond
Making a new pond / RHS Gardening
