Nursing my garden through Austin’s arid summers, I tend to go a little ga-ga over things like rain barrels, rain chains, and just rain in general. Now I’m excited about rain gardens. I have one, actually, but didn’t even know it until yesterday, when I picked up the current issue (Summer 2006) of nativeplants, the quarterly publication of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and soon to be renamed Wildflower. Inside, author Julie Bawden Davis promotes rain gardens as a “green” way to reduce pollutants in the ground water, reduce runoff, reduce the need to water your garden, help prevent flooding and erosion, and create habitats for wildlife (when planted with natives). What’s not to like?

It seems that “runaway rain,” as Davis puts it, surges out of everyone’s gutters and then right out to the storm drains in the street. During heavy rains, she explains, very little water has a chance to soak into the lawn or planting beds before flowing out of your yard. Moreover, as rainwater courses across your driveway, patios, and overfertilized and pesticided lawn, it picks up all those pollutants and carries them right into your local creek, damaging the natural ecosystem in local waterways. Eek.

If you can slow the flow of rainwater across your property by diverting it into a rain garden, Davis argues, you can keep those pollutants out of the creek because the plants themselves will filter much of the nasty stuff right out of the water. By the time the water seeps down into the aquifers and groundwater, it’s clean again. Natural filtration at work.

Creating a rain garden is as simple as digging a 3-4″ swale where rainwater naturally flows, like near a downspout or next to a driveway or patio. Davis suggests amending your soil to avoid hard-packed areas that won’t soak up the water. You don’t want a swamp. Put in plants that can take a little extra water now and then, and voila!—you’ve made a beautiful new garden bed that will require less watering from you and that is helping keep your local creek clean.

As I read the article, I realized that I already have a rain garden in my back yard. The City of Austin frequently offers rain barrels for sale for as little as $65, and I’d picked up two over the years. One collects water at the back of my garage, the other at the back porch. The one at the porch is part of my rain garden system.

I use the rainwater to refill my little container pond every few days. But when we get a good rain, the rain barrel overflows in a matter of minutes. So I dug a shallow trench at the base of the rain barrel, lined it with weedblocking fabric, and filled it with New Mexico river rock.

When it rains, the overflow pours into the dry streambed, runs under a stone-slab bridge, and sluices into what I now know to call my rain garden.

And—hello!—now I realize why my cedar elm has grown so fast. It’s getting an extra-deep soaking every time it rains. The other plants in my rain garden also appreciate the extra water. Like the cedar elm, they’re mostly natives, so this is a great garden for attracting wildlife too: Turk’s cap, Texas betony, Lindheimer muhly grass, Southern wax myrtle, salvia guaranitica, oxalis, heartleaf skullcap, spiderwort, columbine, and coralberry. Birds, bees, and butterflies love it.

I can’t feel completely virtuous, though. When we moved into this house, we noticed that water was standing under the front porch. An inspection revealed that rainwater was backing into that area rather than running away from the house. My husband, through backbreaking labor, installed a French drain along the front porch that collects the rainwater and funnels it to a sump pump at the corner of the house. From there, yes, it is flushed out to the street in a pipe that runs beneath a garden that might like an extra drink now and then. What were we thinking, I now wonder, when I see that rainwater flowing out at the curb. That water should be in my garden! Well, live and learn.