By Caron Schwartz
RAIN GARDENING
My house was an on-vacation impulse buy when I fell for its quirky neo-Mediterranean charm. I knew there would be trouble: flat roof, cloth wiring, a grubby kitchen last updated in the 1950s. To my experienced homeowner eye, however, these things were manageable.
The yard was a different story: a quarter acre of torpedo grass, a few sad palms, and a tangle of bougainvillea encroaching on the front door. After removing the bougainvillea, I planted a stately Bismarck palm and called it a day. But at the insistence of friends who claimed the house had “no curb appeal,” I grudgingly planted a few jatrophas and crepe myrtles. Occasional mowing kept the weeds at bay.
When Lenny moved in, he had different ideas. “We need a wildflower garden to attract bees and butterflies,” he proclaimed, surveying the wasteland. Aware of the persistent drought, we invested in rain barrels to save the occasional precious downpour. They became vital to keeping our baby trees, courtesy of Gulfport’s generous tree giveaways, alive.
After much coaxing, I agreed to a rain garden, a shallow garden of native plants that collects runoff and filters out nutrients and other pollutants before they reach nearby bodies of water. We hired Toffer Ross, a local horticulturist, to design it, and another friend to dig. After field trips to Wilcox Nursery and Carroll’s Building Materials for river rocks, along with bags of leaves from neighbors with mature trees, the fun began. We augmented the soil with composted kitchen scraps. Then, we planted firebush, dwarf Simpson stopper, and swamp milkweed, surrounded the whole thing with rocks, and laid on a layer of leaf mulch. After watering with saved rainwater, we admired our handiwork. For the cherry on top, Lenny plumbed an
underground pipe from a downspout to the sunken garden.
Within days, we saw our work paid off. Torrential storms overtook the area, flooding the backyard and draining into the rain garden, preventing runoff from entering beautiful Boca Ciega Bay. Our plant babies sure look happy!