Rain Gardens

Rain Garden FAQs

What is a rain garden?

A rain garden is an engineered structure that reduces the amount of stormwater entering the CSO (Combined Sewer Overflow) system, and thus reduces the risk of sewer overflows.

What are the advantages
of a rain garden?

This process restores groundwater sources and encourages native plant life while also reducing flash flooding and water pollution.

How does a rain garden work?

Because the rain enters streams very slowly through the groundwater filtering process, the water returns to the environment clean and without pollutants.

Two Silver Creek Engineering employees, Graeme Sharpe and Kevin Sumner, volunteered to help The Indianapolis American Society of Civil Engineers Environmental and Water Resources Institute (ASCE/EWRI) install rain gardens at two local schools. The ASCE crew scouts out locations and designs bioretention ponds with the help of landscape architects, civil engineers, city officials, and landscaping/nursery companies. The gardens provide working green infrastructure, facilitate lessons for the kids, and reduce landscaping maintenance by removing mowed lawn area and drowning out weeds in the pond area. Graeme, a Professional Engineer at Silver Creek Engineering, helped complete the rain gardens at Cold Spring School and Crooked Creek School in Indianapolis. Kevin, a Project Manager at SCE, surveyed the rain garden site at Cold Spring School.

The kids play games to learn about water quality.

Students and volunteers install plants in the rain garden.

ASCE comes to the site for Installation Day.

Water is funneled into the rain garden from a collector, such as a roof or parking lot.

Once rainwater enters the garden, an earth berm contains the water in a pond area.

The native plants grow very deep roots that allow the soil to absorb water over the next few days.

The rain garden reduces landscaping maintenance by removing mowed lawn area and drowning out weeds in the pond area.

Installing A Rain Garden

A Rain Garden At Work

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