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Dave Epstein: Hi! I am Dave Epstein. This is Growing Wisdom and we are here today with Scott LaFleur, the Horticultural Director of Garden in the Woods and the New England Wild Flower Society. And -- you know, you and I were chatting before we started filming this about the rain garden. I have next to my house, wetlands and my lawn slopes down and I know because those wetlands are monitored that some of the things that I use to use in the past upon my lawn before I really became totally organic had ended up in the wetlands.
Scott LaFleur: Exactly. Water can travel from your yard into a river into the ocean and it sorts of connects all of us. So if you are trying to keep water clean, you really are helping out the entire environment.
Dave Epstein: And we are doing that with -- tell me about what we have -- what this is called and how you do it?
Scott LaFleur: This is called a rain garden. And a rain garden is simply a depression. It is built in to the landscape by 18 inches or so deep and it is designed to catch water that is coming off your property. So, before the wetland, you would want to set up an area where the rain garden would catch that water coming from your yard, would collect in the rain garden and would sink in to the ground going through like a natural microbial cleaning process before it hit the wetland. This is going to help with the runoff, because runoff from your yard collects all the fertilizers that you may have used or pesticides or anything else that might be around in your yard and the rain garden will stop that before it hits the wetland, that area that is next to your house.
Dave Epstein: And a lot of water, a lot of the big water actually comes off from the roof, right?
Scott LaFleur: Correct.
Dave Epstein: So, you have put a rain garden here. Tell me about how this rain garden is working in this area.
Scott LaFleur: This rain garden here is working by having a downspout directly off the education building coming to the rain garden which is one of the two ways you can do a rain garden, either in the lawn or connected to a downspout. So what this does is it collects all the water coming off this really big building and hold it into a garden area, let it sink into the ground slowly, gets cleaned, recharges ground water and at the same time waters our plants.
Dave Epstein: Did we have to choose plants that are a little bit more tolerant off weather areas.
Scott LaFleur: Absolutely. But the key is, it is not a wetland. You cannot use the pitcher plants, you cannot use the real bog plant because you will have a rain garden -- it is going to get inundated with water and then it is going to dry out.
Dave Epstein: So, I know you guys are big on -- what is called sustainable landscaping and this really does incorporate itself into that mission.
Scott LaFleur: Completely.
Dave Epstein: And tell me about that a little bit.
Scott LaFleur: This is one of the easiest ways to really do a sustainable ecological garden because we do not want fertilizers and pesticides and things like that getting into an open waterway.
Dave Epstein: Well, Scott, that is really helpful. And I hope you that you learned something here. A very easy way to help you create a sustainable garden in your own yard and if you would like instructions for this, they are on the website, all that you have to do is go down underneath this video and print out the instructions that we have for you and you could bring them right on to your own yard and build your own rain garden. Come back every week for all of our tips, hints and helps at GrowingWisdom.com.
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