Clean Lake Tip: Rain Gardens

Summer rainstorms can turn roads to rivers. As water travels over an impervious landscape, it collects everything within its flow, including harmful pollutants, on its way to Lake Champlain. How can we keep some of the summer deluge from becoming runoff? One particularly charming form of landscaping for water quality is the rain garden. 

A rain garden is a shallow, bowl-shaped garden specifically designed to capture and absorb stormwater—rainfall and snowmelt—from surfaces like parking lots, roofs, compacted soil, and roads. As stormwater flows over these hard surfaces, it picks up pollutants such as sediment, nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus), bacteria from animal waste, oil, grease, and heavy metals from vehicles. This polluted water often ends up in lakes and rivers, either directly or through storm drains. 

In addition to carrying pollutants, excess stormwater contributes to flooding and erosion of stream banks, leading to further environmental damage. Rain gardens help address these problems by allowing stormwater to soak into the ground, recharging groundwater at a rate 30% higher than a typical lawn. By reducing the volume of runoff and filtering out pollutants, rain gardens play a vital role in protecting local waterways.  

If flood reduction and water quality improvements aren’t enough to sell you, rain gardens do even more: they attract pollinators and birds, increasing biodiversity. Installing a rain garden can also solve drainage problems specific to your property.  

The Rain Garden Manual for Vermont and the Lake Champlain Basin, created by Lake Champlain Sea Grant, is a resource for homeowners, local officials, or anyone interested in protecting water quality. The current version was published in May 2021 and includes updates to design specifications, installation, and even potential impacts of climate change on your rain garden.