Rain Gardens & Bioswales

Rain gardens and bioswales are garden spaces that collect rain from another surface and let it soak into the ground slowly. Bioswales, which are essentially channels planted with vegetation, have the added feature of moving water from one place to another. If you have a parking pad at the top of your yard, you might install a bioswale to channel water into a rain garden below. What water doesn’t percolate into the ground in the bioswale will collect in the rain garden and sink into the ground there.

Rain Gardens at the Green Learning Center

At the Green Learning Station, all the water captured through our pervious pavement goes to the rain gardens along Reading Road and Oak Street. We also send all of the stormwater runoff from our non-pervious driveway to the Oak Street rain garden, which keeps it out of the sewers.

Our newest rain garden, planted in the fall of 2021, surrounds the parking pad on June Street.

Planning a Rain Garden

It’s best to choose deep-rooted, drought-tolerant plants for rain gardens so you don’t need to water them between rainfalls. To design your rain garden, you need to know how quickly your soil drains and how much water you’re sending to it. Rain gardens are not the same as swamps! They’re quite dry if it is hasn’t rained recently, and well-designed gardens drain within 24 hours of a rainfall.

Want to learn more?

Visit the Green Learning Station to find out more about rain gardens and bioswales. You can also check out our rain garden guide or register for the next Greater Cincinnati Master Rain Gardener course.

Questions? Contact our Sustainability and Ecology Education Coordinator, Mary Dudley: mdudley@civicgardencenter.org