Rain gardens and nerding out over native plants

Erin: 00:06

Welcome to another episode of the Everyday Environment podcast where we explore the environment we see every day. I'm your host, Erin Garrett.

Abigail: 00:13

And I'm your cohost, Abigail Garofalo.

Erin: 00:16

And today, we are here with Lane Knoche, and Layne is an Extension Stormwater Outreach Associate for Illinois Indiana Sea Grant, and Illinois extension. Welcome, Lane.

Layne: 00:26

Hi, everyone.

Erin: 00:27

We're really excited to have you on the podcast as a fellow native plant nature nerd. We chat about native plants nearly every podcast episode, so we're super excited to have you on as a guest today.

Layne: 00:39

Yeah. Excited to be here.

Erin: 00:40

So as we get started, we really like to dive into what our guests do, and we all have fun job titles. So, Layne, can you tell us a little bit about the work that you do?

Layne: 00:52

Yeah. Of course. So, as Erin said, I am a stormwater outreach associate with Illinois Extension and Illinois Indiana Sea Grant. I work a lot with green stormwater infrastructure programs, particularly with rain gardens and water quality. I'm surrounded by just an amazing team.

Layne: 01:10

I work with Eliana Brown, is Extension's storm water and water quality specialist, and another outreach associate, Maddie Kraft, and a lot of really amazing students on our team from the University of Illinois who we have the pleasure of of having worked with us. You know, we love teaming up with Extension and community partners from around the state, including both of you, to tackle those kinds of local flooding issues, improve water quality, and really to inspire and educate people about sustainable practices.

Abigail: 01:43

Awesome. So we invited you on specifically to talk about a particular sustainable practice, which is rain gardens. So let's just start out really basic. What is a rain garden?

Layne: 01:55

Alright. So in its most basic form, a rain garden is a shallow bowl shaped landscape. It collects and absorbs storm water and snow melt from areas that are surrounding it. And I like to think of it as kind of a natural sponge. It captures water that would otherwise run off of hard surfaces, like roads or rooftops.

Layne: 02:17

So as water flows from those hard surfaces, it picks up and carries pollutants into our water bodies, so our rivers and lakes, usually through traditional gray storm water infrastructure such as storm sewers. Rain gardens soak up that water. They filter it through the soil, they filter it through the plants, and in turn, they reduce flooding and minimize the quantity of storm water that reaches often what are already overburdened storm sewer systems. On top of this, they provide habitat for local wildlife, they recharge groundwater, and you could go even into carbon sequestration with these things. They're really impressive landscape features.

Erin: 02:59

I love it. I love the reference to it being a sponge. I think that's a great visual for a lot of people to think about, like, soaking that water up and keeping it in place. Right? And then, like, having it filter down instead of away off of our landscape. Right? It's trying to, like, hold it in place. So I really like that visual for sure.

Erin: 03:19

This is obviously our water season. A lot of our guests have mentioned rain gardens as a practice. Why are we talking about rain gardens in particular in this season where we're focusing on water?

Layne: 03:32

This is a really good question. I think that it's really appropriate to talk about rain gardens because they protect water. You know, this season is all about water. Rain gardens are are there to protect it. They they prevent pollutants, as I mentioned, from reaching rivers, lakes, and streams.

Layne: 03:48

They help to manage storm water, which is becoming a bigger challenge with urbanization and extreme weather. And rain gardens go beyond just solving water related problems. They highlight the connection between how we care for our landscapes, like in our in our own spaces, and the health of our waterways. There's a really great connection there with with installing rain gardens.

Abigail: 04:12

A lot of people, like, we had like, oh, it's just my yard. What does it have to do with anything? And it kind of builds that larger community sense of like Yeah. Tackling a challenge.

Layne: 04:21

Yeah. Absolutely. Talking about community scale, is something that's really important when we think about rain garden installation. You know, one rain garden in one person's yard isn't necessarily going to solve a community wide flash flooding issue. But when we think of these collectively, when we think about building a network of these kinds of infrastructure, you can really have incredible impacts and we see it happening in Illinois neighborhoods.

Abigail: 04:49

Very cool. And so when we think about our rain gardens, you know, we're obviously putting plants in these gardens. And on this podcast, we love native garden we love native plants. We're big fans over here, especially if you're a long time listener, you're like, no surprise, we're gonna talk about native plants. How do native plants support rain gardens?

Layne: 05:11

Well, native plants are really great for rain gardens, and I'm glad that that we at at Extension really love talking about this because they really are applicable in so many of of our environmental kind of focused projects. But they really are great for for rain gardens. A lot of our Midwestern native plants have deep and or extensive root systems that help to stabilize soil. They help the plant itself withstand extreme weather events, like heavy rain or drought. And these root systems also help to improve water infiltration.

Layne: 05:44

So as roots grow and they die in the soil, they open up pore spaces That allows more water to infiltrate into the ground. And you know, on top of all of that, we've got our support for local wildlife. For instance, milkweed, of course, it's connection with the monarch butterfly. You know, even grasses, switchgrass is is one that I really enjoy using. They provide habitat year round, and they also add aesthetic structure to a garden as well.

Erin: 06:11

Grasses are awesome. I have to give a plug. Native grasses really overlooked in a lot of landscape settings, but gaining popularity. And so I'd love including them because it's really easy to focus on all the colors, right, of all the flowers. But if you want some structure that's there, you know, kind of throughout the seasons, grasses are a great choice.

Abigail: 06:32

Yeah. I think it's not always like a one to one, right, like native plant versus non native are always gonna tell you exact like do exactly what you want. Right? And but it's a good categorization to like be like, okay, if it is native, it's probably going to have this deeper root system. It's going to be a better adapted.

Abigail: 06:52

It's going to have this wildlife value of the native Illinois wildlife that's going to add to it, to this system. And so it's, you know, you can go non native, but I always say, like, do a lot more research then. I mean, it might be a little it's a little easier to kind of, like, generally apply to native. Now there are non or there are natives that you're like, maybe we don't wanna plant that one just because it can be not the best fit for a managed space. Right?

Abigail: 07:19

But it is definitely you have a little easier of a time working with your native species than a non native that could become a problem, or is maybe just like not gonna you you don't know if it provides all those benefits that a native could.

Layne: 07:37

Yeah. Without going too deep into design just yet, I want to talk about a species that I think is is really interesting for both of your points here. There is a species that we have used at the Red Oak Rain Garden, which is Extensions demonstration rain garden landscape. It's on the University of Illinois campus. And in the basin of that rain garden, we used a species of sedge called Emory's sedge, Carex emoryi.

Layne: 08:06

And that is, as we have learned, one of those species that is better for the, how do I say this, the non designed landscape. It is a little bit of an aggressive native species. Make sure that we have a distinction. It is not an invasive species, it is an aggressive native species. But that plant does a phenomenal job at soaking up water.

Layne: 08:33

We planted a couple hundred of them in our very large rain garden and just this past summer, I was curious to see what those root systems looked like within our own soil. And I mentioned that rain gardens are like a natural sponge. When you cut into the soil and check out a cross section of Emery's sedge roots, you can really understand why these things work as a sponge. It even looks like a sponge. The root systems are so extensive, they're so dense, they soak up so much water that they look like a sponge.

Layne: 09:09

It's really fascinating to me. You can shake the soil off, and it looks like you could just, you know, take a little clump of it back to your kitchen sink and do your dishes.

Erin: 09:16

That's crazy.

Layne: 09:18

It it was really impressive. Yeah. It's five years of growth, and yeah, it's just, it's really impressive. And one of the interesting things about, you know, we're talking about native plants and their root systems, You have compass plant that can send roots 15 feet into the soil. Right?

Layne: 09:35

Like, just incredible to think about. Sedges typically are not going to be sending roots 15 feet into the ground. They're gonna kind of stay closer to that, you know, twelve, fifteen inch depth, If if even that. You know, I think about the sedge that I dug up, which is in a an engineered soil, which you know, kind of allowed for the roots to grow a little bit faster than than maybe a native soil would have. But So when we when we cut into that that Emery sedge, we had maybe eight inches or so of root of root depth, but it was very dense root systems.

Layne: 10:16

It wasn't, you know, just a little strand of root here, little strand of root there. It was a dense mat of really impressive root system that, again, looks like something that you could just take from the soil and take it into your your kitchen, shake the the soil off before you go inside maybe, and do your dishes with it. Really cool plant. That makes I mean, I love thinking about that plant and about like the reason for that kind of adaptation. Right? Like, it's a wet loving plant. It usually probably lives in, like, sometimes flooded soils, basins probably. And so, like, what like, that root system is probably very advantageous for it to make sure, A, it's, like, stuck there and has it can't just be like a few, otherwise it'll wash away. It's gotta be kind of really there and also really good at kind of getting that water up. Yeah. I mean, our wet loving plants tend to have a shallower root system because they don't have to reach down into the soil. Like a, I mentioned compass plant earlier. Compass plant is kind of an upland prairie species. It's not typically going to be found, you know, growing in a swamp. And therefore, it needs to have those roots that can really reach down and soak water up from deep in the earth, without even getting into the fire resistance of a species like that.

Erin: 11:35

Lane, I'm really curious. We're chatting about different types of native plants. Do you have a favorite native plant?

Layne: 11:42

I do. I do have a favorite native plant. It changes every year. That that's how I do it, you know. That that keeps my my mind broad.

Layne: 11:52

I think that my favorite native species of of this year is probably Bradbury's monarda. Monarda bradburiana. It is a lovely, lovely addition to kind of those moderate conditioned gardens. It can tolerate a bit of sun, it can tolerate a bit of shade, it can tolerate some droughts, it can tolerate some rain. So it's pretty friendly in that way.

Layne: 12:18

Speaking of friendly, I don't find it nearly as aggressive as some of the other Monardas. I actually don't grow some of them because I don't have a lot of time to go out in the spring and chop the the bee balm, the monardas out from places where they have moved into. I don't tend to have that problem with Bradbury's monarda. Usually stays kind of in its little clump, stays shorter than some of the other bee balms as well. Lovely bloom display happens just a little bit earlier than than the wild bee balm that that we see often in our in our prairies.

Layne: 12:56

It also has some really great seasonal interest. It has some fall color on it, and then those those little balls from what's left of the flower, I usually leave those up over the wintertime, and they just look lovely when snow falls on them. Really friendly growing with like prairie dropseed too. That's kind of my combination that I've been doing. Oh.

Abigail: 13:16

Bring a landscape architect on, they tell you, they're like, here's the combo of the growing and the management strategy in which I like about this play. It's hilarious. I love it.

Layne: 13:24

They grow really well together. Throw in some penstemon for a little bit of additional spring color in there, and and honestly, I just I love that combo.

Erin: 13:33

That's great. I had that Bradbury's Monarda at my old house. It's in Make the Move. That's one of the ones that got lost in because I transplanted things in July, which is not a good idea, into pots, and then I didn't plant until the fall. And it had died back, and I I could not find the roots.

Erin: 13:50

That was so sad. But, yeah, it was super well behaved, and it, like, had brilliant red leaves in the fall. It was awesome. Absolutely.

Layne: 13:57

It's it's a really great species.

Erin: 13:59

Abigail, what's your favorite native?

Abigail: 14:02

Mine's a grass. I've just been feeling it lately, so I'm going I'm channeling Erin. I really love little bluestem. I think it's so cute. I love that it's like got like the I don't know.

Abigail: 14:15

It gives me wild prairie vibes with also still being manageable in my yard. I love the fall color and the winter color it has, like it's just so pretty right now and when it gets fluffy, it's really fun. And I have, like, so much of it in my yard because my neighbor works for Public Works. And so he was like, I have a ton extra that we never ended up planting. Do you want it?

Abigail: 14:35

And he just brings me like a flat of 20. And I was like, sure. I'll plant it on the side of my house. It's a nice little row of little bluestem now. And so it just looks really good.

Abigail: 14:45

It's like a managed, like, grass bunch set. And I don't know. Just it's so I look at it and I'm like, I love it in the winter and maybe that's why I love it right now. But, yeah. Little Bluestem Schizachyrium scoparium.

Layne: 15:00

Is that how you say the botanical on that one? I've always had a hard time saying it.

Erin: 15:05

Say it with confidence, and then it's fine.

Layne: 15:08

Yep. That's what I usually do.

Abigail: 15:10

You know, you all made me question if I was saying it right, and I think I said it with enough confidence that you all believed me. So That's what I remember from from undergrad because I that from that native plant class, so I, you know, I just go with it. I also never forget it because people are always like big bluestem and little bluestem is related, and I'm like, it's not actually. The scientific names are very different.

Abigail: 15:31

Schizahcyrium and Andropogon are two different.

Layne: 15:34

So Yeah. And little bluestem, I think, was the what was it? The 2022 perennial plant of the year. Like, it it it was a big deal. The perennial plant association, I believe, made it there. Yeah. I think it was their 2022 plant of the year.

Abigail: 15:51

There you go. Alright, Erin. Let me hear your favorite one.

Erin: 15:54

So mine is not one that's super popular in gardening settings, but that doesn't mean that I don't have it in my garden. My favorite native plant of all time is prairie smoke, which is

Abigail: 16:06

Love prairie smoke. Nice.

Erin: 16:08

Not found where I'm at, but up in Northern Illinois, and then when I worked in Minnesota in the prairies there, we would find prairie smoke, and it just if you've never seen it, it just looks like a red tuft of smoke, and it's so stunning in the spring. So I got one and planted it in my garden, and it survived the year.

Erin: 16:32

So I'm hoping it survived the winter and made it through. It hasn't bloomed yet, but I'm hopeful that maybe in the spring, we'll get it to bloom. But besides, you know, a little blue stem prairie dropseed, I have so many butterfly milkweed, all the ones. I love it. But anything like red or orange really kinda sticks out to me because you don't find those colors as often. So that's my favorite.

Abigail: 16:53

Prairie Smoke gives me like truffle a tree. Like it's it's like mini, like Lorax vibes. Love it. You know? Yes.

Layne: 17:01

It is Lorax vibes. Absolutely. Yeah. The so I I was just I was just doing some editing on our plant finder tool. I had to add an Indiana filter because we're gonna be integrating it with rainscaping, which is really cool and exciting.

Layne: 17:17

And prairie smoke is the only species on our list of 136 that is technically native in Illinois, but is not native in Indiana.

Erin: 17:27

Interesting.

Layne: 17:28

We're right on the edge. And That's interesting. I didn't know that. And I was like, this doesn't seem right. Truly, it's native in Indiana too. Nope. It is not.

Abigail: 17:38

Even like not like like the border completely? Like it's not even, it doesn't even go

Layne: 17:43

like We're on a southern, like southwestern edge of its range. Right?

Abigail: 17:47

Mhmm.

Layne: 17:49

Yeah.

Abigail: 17:49

Yeah. My neighbor has it in her rain garden in her front yard and she labels it, so she has labels. And every time I pass her house, I'm always like, look. Like and so I love to kinda look through them. Good.

Layne: 18:02

They're just happy. They're happy little things.

Erin: 18:04

They are. Happy little things. Yep. Well, so let's get back to

Abigail: 18:08

our rain garden and our back on topic. Right? So if you all checked out for the last ten minutes, come on back to us. We're talking back about rain gardens. We're gonna have these more rainfall events due to, more extreme weather.

Abigail: 18:23

Can rain gardens help with these heavy rainfall events? I know Erin said she just had one yesterday.

Layne: 18:30

Yeah. Rain gardens really can help with with these kind of extreme rainfall events that we've been seeing. I like to think of it like this. Prior to development, most surfaces, you know, across the state were permeable. We didn't have roads, we didn't have parking lots.

Layne: 18:49

Water really soaked in to to most of our landscapes. Today, again, with roads and roofs and parking lots, a lot of that water that comes down is quickly redirected to the nearest water body. And then that has a really big impact, especially in urbanized areas, on the quality and the quantity of water that that reaches that water body. With rain gardens, we look back to those pre development conditions, kind of at a smaller scale. They're a nature based solution to help communities adapt to these heavier rainfall events.

Layne: 19:24

They slow down and absorb rainwater that would otherwise cause flash flooding. And when designed well, especially, you know, were talking about at that community scale, they reduce strain on our traditional stormwater infrastructure systems and and lower the risk of neighborhood flooding. Plus their ability to absorb water helps to protect downstream water bodies and and their kind of nearby ecosystems from being overwhelmed with excess storm water.

Abigail: 19:51

The way our landscape has changed. So let's say you're not even in a very urban environment. You're like, well, I don't have a ton of impermeable surfaces around me. Right? Like, it's fairly rural.

Abigail: 19:59

There's a lot of open space. I think what we also think too is like the channelization of our water and how there's not really absorption happening nearly as much regardless of if your community has a lot of impermeable surfaces or not. So like we're channelizing, by that I mean like all of our water is very specifically going into rivers and streams. Not a lot is being absorbed into the ground. And that's due to land use changes changes in general. Right?

Layne: 20:33

Yeah. Even a person's lawn, for example, That's a really good example of something that you might think is really soaking in a lot of water, when it's it's actually not. Grass systems have, you know, two, maybe three inches of root system compared to, you know, in many cases feet of root system that exists underneath native plantings. So you're losing some infiltration there. On top of that, our lawns are being mowed, often by like a lawn a lawn mower or lawn tractor, that is compacting the soil.

Layne: 21:09

And after decades and decades of that compaction, the soil becomes very hard and water just kind of runs off of it. Not all of it. It's not the same as a parking lot. It's not a paved surface. So lawns are soaking in some water, but it's not nearly as much as what you would see with native plantings, and especially with rain gardens. Rain gardens absorb 30% more than the equivalent area of a just a grass lawn. So they are really useful for adapting to these more extreme rain events that we're seeing.

Abigail: 21:45

And a lot of lawn spaces we're not really needing to have as like flat lawn. Right? Like I I usually get that question as like, what do I, you know, like, but I like my lawn and I'm like, well, what do you like about it? Do you like the look? Do you like that you get to play on it? Like, what is the functionality of that space for you? Because if the answer is you just you don't need it to play on, you don't need a flat, you know, surface that people can run on or or or, you know, recreate on or whatever, you know, if it's a beauty thing, like, let's talk about other options that are also functional in an environmental way for our communities and and landscapes.

Erin: 22:27

That makes me think about when we moved into our new house, we specifically bought a house with nearly a half acre yard, and it was basically a blank slate, which is what I wanted because I wanted to tear out, like, more than half the lawn. Right? And turn it into gardens. And my dad came to visit, he's like, you got the perfect setup for a wiffle ball field here. And I'm like, oh, well, the vegetable garden's gonna go here, and we're gonna plant trees here and here, and then the native garden, he's like, you're ruining it.

Erin: 22:54

I'm like, but we're not gonna use it for that purpose. We're not gonna use it in that way. We need some space.

Abigail: 22:59

You're not wiffle ball player.

Erin: 23:01

I'm like, that's that's what we did as a kid, and we had a good setup in the backyard, but I'm like, nope. We're gonna put trees in and other plants, and we're gonna convert some of this lawn. So like, it's different for every person. Right? Like, what is your land use?

Erin: 23:13

What, you know, is your intention to use your lawn for? And then, yeah, what are some ways that you can maybe reduce some of your lawn that you're not using and put it into a different sort of, you know, use

Layne: 23:27

Yeah. And tying it directly back to this water topic that we're discussing here, the the lawns that you often see that are those green, rich, manicured, beautiful green carpets. They're lush. They're usually not natural. Right?

Layne: 23:44

Like, somebody is putting different kinds of fertilizer on that to make sure that it stays nice and green, and that can really impact our water quality as well. You know, as as that moves with water that comes down onto it, it can have impact. And so if you are going to have a big, open, green lawn, definitely check out the, the natural lawn care options that, Lawn to Lake Midwest talks about, on their fantastic website.

Erin: 24:16

So when we're talking about, you know, changing converting some of our lawn, putting in a rain garden, in this case. Right? If I'm convinced, which I am, so this is a great question for me to ask. I'm convinced I want a rain garden. I haven't done it yet, but, like, let's break down some of the steps that we need to go through to kind of put one in in practice.

Erin: 24:38

So first of all, how do you know if a certain space in your landscape is a good fit for a rain garden?

Layne: 24:46

Yeah. It's a great question. And and before we really dive into this, I do want to mention that it's gonna be very hard for me to tell you exactly how to build a successful rain garden, you know, in a podcast that's under an hour. But I will talk about kind of a broad overview of things, you know, that that come up with, or that we come up with here today. But I really encourage people to look at the Purdue Rainscaping Education Program that Illinois Extension has brought over into our state as well.

Layne: 25:17

We'll talk about that more in kind of the the the wrap up of the podcast here. But when you're looking for the right space for a rain garden on your property, You're going to start by looking for a spot where water is already naturally flowing during a rainstorm. So look at your downspout that's coming from your roof, or look at an area where water is being shed off of your driveway and onto your lawn. You're going to want to make sure that it is at least 10 feet away from your house. You don't want water pooling near your foundation.

Layne: 25:53

And it's really important to test your soil to see if it drains well. Rain gardens work best in soils that allow water to soak in within twenty four to forty eight hours maximum. And a common misconception that I want to mention here is that rain gardens probably should not be located in an area that already sees standing stagnant water. That kind of implies that your soil there is already having a hard time soaking in water. So instead you're going to want to locate that rain garden just above that, that lowest area where you're already seeing water ponding, so that you capture water before it has a chance to to enter that area, before it causes the ponding.

Abigail: 26:37

So we did a rainscaping class and I got that a lot, and a lot of you, oh, I wanna build it right here. And I'm like, no, actually. And what we'd end up finding out was actually that pooling was from their roof. They would like it would go into their their gutters. Right?

Abigail: 26:53

And lead right into that spot. And I'm like, okay. Now you've identified the source. Like, can you, you know, direct that downspout to another space? Right?

Abigail: 27:03

That's gonna take in that. Can you amend your soil? Like, let's talk about those solutions. Is it a matter of, like, maybe a rain barrel that, like, leads to a hose to that spot or something? Because, yeah, it's never just like a just build a rain garden here where the flooding is.

Layne: 27:19

Yeah. Yeah. They can definitely be a system. You know, these these things that we talk about, rain gardens, rain barrels, they can work in tandem. But you mentioned water fall water falling on a roof.

Layne: 27:31

And, you know, if we think about the average kind of residential roof being somewhere around 1,200 square feet, during a one inch rainstorm, that is 744 gallons of water that's coming off of your roof, in a one inch rainstorm. Just to give you an idea, the standard bathtub is 60 gallons. So 744 gallons of water coming off of your roof. That is that's a lot of water in a single kind of rainstorm event. One inch rainstorms are not that uncommon. And often we see bigger storms than that. So, yeah. A lot of water.

Erin: 28:16

That's 12 bathtubs full. I just did the math in the background.

Abigail: 28:20

I was also just Thank you.

Layne: 28:22

Thank for doing the math. I did not pull my calculator out for this. I just happen to remember those numbers.

Erin: 28:28

I love it. But then that also kind of puts into perspective too, I know I shared this in another episode that we've recorded, but we just had, like, a 1.7 inch rainfall yesterday. So, you know, another good source to look that up is you can go to the CocoRaHS website and that it will show you localized rainfall for your area, or you can also contribute to collecting that data as part of that program. But it kinda showed, like, for us, where I was in my town, it was like a localized, like, a lot heavier rain happened, whereas it was only like an inch, you know, just a few miles up the road. Right?

Erin: 29:10

And so it can really change, but that just kinda helps put it in perspective too. Now I can remember the amount of rain that we got yesterday. I'm like, oh, that was one and a half to two inches of rain. Like, I kind of have that idea in my brain because I think we say that a lot. Right?

Erin: 29:24

In designing rain gardens, we talk about, like, a one inch rainfall and how much water that is, but, like, what does that look like to you too? So it's kinda something to to keep in mind if you're interested is to like, the next time it rains, the next day, or, like, listen to the weather and see what they report as the rainfall amount, right, to kinda get that picture of what that looks like in your head.

Abigail: 29:45

Yeah. And I'm gonna add, we'll put the CoCoRaHS website, right, in our show notes because that's an acronym that may people might not be familiar with. It's a it's a really great program about, like, gathering weather and and local climate data. So I'm trying to find a good spot, but I don't want a pond. I really don't. Like, I don't want mosquitoes. I don't want amphibians in that way, maybe. I don't know. For some reason, I don't want a pond in my yard. Why how do I avoid that?

Layne: 30:18

So if designed properly, rain gardens are intended to drain water within a day or two. If you find that your soil isn't draining fast enough, you can amend it with sand and with compost to improve the infiltration. But this is gonna need to be determined and amended before doing any kind of planting or mulching. The idea is to create a a relatively normal thriving garden for most of the time with plants that can handle those occasional wet conditions, especially areas of your planted garden?

Abigail: 30:49

So it's definitely not something that we just kind of like flippantly do. Like it's a thought out planned garden space in which we're doing, which, you know, we should be planning our spaces, but it's not like a, oh, you know, I'm just gonna put all my wet loving plants here. A rain garden is like an intentionally engineered garden.

Layne: 31:12

Yeah, it is. Engineered is is a great way to put it. And especially because we don't want those standing, stagnant water conditions. We don't want to encourage mosquito populations, you know, in our backyard. We don't necessarily want, for other health reasons, water to be standing there for more than forty eight hours.

Layne: 31:37

That water does have to soak into the ground, you know, even with the plants there. There are many plants that can withstand, you know, that day, maybe two, of being inundated with water. You know, water is standing around them. But after that time, the plants can start to be impacted negatively by that much standing water for as long as as that, you know. You don't want five days of standing water in your yard.

Layne: 32:09

Most people do not. And your neighbors might not be happy with you if that were the case either. So think about your soil infiltration before you start planting.

Erin: 32:20

Yeah. Definitely. And I think Abigail brings up a good point too. When we're talking about picking out what plants, is it as simple as, oh, everything that loves a lot of moisture, that's what I put here, and that's the only plants that I put here. Or is there more nuance to what goes in a rain garden?

Layne: 32:39

There's there's a lot that goes into it, and this is part of the reason why it's like, it's gonna be very hard to tell you exactly what to do, you know, in building a rain garden and a short podcast here. There are definitely plenty of Extension resources that can help you out here. But, basically, look at native plants and recognize their strengths in these kinds of situations. You're going to want to understand things like your light conditions, of course, but with rain gardens, you really want to understand moisture conditions. Since it is kind of a bowl shaped feature that absorbs water, the low basin, kind of the lowest point of your garden, is going to experience periods where it's wetter than the areas that are kind of on the rim of that bowl, the high and dry locations.

Layne: 33:26

I usually call them the banks of the rain garden. So selecting plants for your garden that are based on moisture level zones is really important. You've got your basin. Again, that's your lowest, wettest point of the garden. You want plants that can withstand several hours of standing water.

Layne: 33:47

You might look at blue flag iris, swamp milkweed, palm sedge are are three that come to mind. The next level up in your rain garden is your slope. And in that area, that's kind of your transition. You're gonna have more moderate moisture conditions, so you might want plants like great blue lobelia, orange coneflower, rudbeckias. Little bluestem, of course, is a lovely grass that we've already mentioned that that does well in those kind of middle conditions as well.

Layne: 34:19

And then we get to our high and dry locations of the rain garden, which is our the the banks. And that's where you want drought tolerant species like butterfly weed, prairie dropseed, blazing star. You can have a lovely combination of grasses and flowering plants and sedges in these diverse kinds of landscapes. I like to be naturalistic in my planting design, So I include a mix of ground covers and seasonal seasonal bloomers, and then some structural plants in there, like tall grasses or even shrubs. They help provide year round architecture and interest.

Layne: 35:00

Combinations like, you know, these things help to boost biodiversity, and they create year round visual appeal as well. And especially with the the ground cover layer, I think, you can create a really functional landscape. It is helping to increase absorption of your rain garden, but it's also helping to shade out weed seeds. In this ground cover layer, you know, I really talk about sedges. They are fantastic in these these systems.

Layne: 35:33

And there are a lot of different ones that you can choose from. There is the Illinois Groundwork Plant Finder tool that can help you select some of these plants for these different conditions. There are ferns, there are flowering plants, there's all kinds of wonderful stuff that can go into these gardens, but you have to be thoughtful about it. You don't want to put compass plant with its 15 feet of root systems in the wettest part of your rain garden, because it's probably not going to thrive there. Will it survive?

Layne: 36:03

Maybe. Because it's not always going to be wet. But it's not going to to love it, and you really want plants to to thrive in these different zones of your rain garden.

Abigail: 36:16

I love that system, and you break that down, or that's broken down as well in those Red Oak rain garden resources that, like, talk about, like, here's some, like, a a design option and, like, the plants and what they look like in all seasons. We'll share those in the show notes. Those are a favorite of of at least up here, we share them all the time. And I love that it breaks it down into that, like, that structural and, like, those different kinds, because a lot of people just think like, oh, I'm just gonna put all my showers in there.

Abigail: 36:47

I'm gonna make them all beautiful, and it just adds some different pieces. And I've personally fallen into that pitfall. I had some pieces, but I was finding my my plants were flopping. And I was like, man, what is cut? Like and some plants just like they're, you know, in our in our more nutrient rich environment. And so I was like, oh, I and like after kind of seeing that and talking with you, I was like, oh, I need to add more structure underneath to give that ground cover and also give that good root competition underneath to help with the the health of the plants and this this composition as well. And so that that really, really helped in in kind of shifting things up because, you know, there's a lot of beauty in not just the the showers. Right? It's it's in all the pieces, and it's that composition that you usually see that, like, you see other people's and you go, oh, man. I want mine to look like that. Right? They're using all of those elements.

Layne: 37:38

Yeah. And as we shift away from what has been kind of the traditional planting design methodology of here's a plant, here's three feet of mulch, here's a plant, here's another three feet of mulch. As we move away from that and into this more naturalistic design, which is a very good thing, by the way, I'm happy to see it happening, it does take a bit of a shift in understanding and and just a new look at aesthetics. What do we find beautiful? Because for a long time, that is what people found beautiful, and we are starting to see that change where we want to see the ground covered with beautiful plants.

Layne: 38:28

We're not so focused on one plant being showy and beautiful, you know, the spotlight is on that plant surrounded by its three feet of of red dyed mulch.

Abigail: 38:39

Both of our faces were giggling at that red dyed mulch comment. That's so funny. No hate to people who like their red dyed mulch. Everybody has their. But like, using kind of a more like, A. it's dyed. Right? So think about, like, what is not like, what can we do not add inputs to that don't need inputs. Right? The the wood itself can be beautiful. And then I like natural ground cover mulch. Right? Like, they call it living mulch. Right? It's like this idea of the the the structural plants underneath providing that cover, and they die back in the in the winter, providing that that extra nutrient, and decomposition activity that's that's necessary for that.

Layne: 39:20

Yeah. As we as we shift away from from that, it's really exciting, I think, to see people get excited about this. And with Extension, you know, it's it's amazing being able to offer people the resources to get them there, to help them understand, you know, why these these updates are so important, not only for water quality, but for wildlife and and community health. All kinds of different different things go with this switch in mentality.

Abigail: 39:53

Well, you were talking about some of these resources you develop and and and you work with, and you've mentioned a few and I just I we wanna learn more. Where can we learn more about rain gardens, about plant selection for rain gardens, just more resources to help people that are inspired by this this podcast?

Layne: 40:12

So I think the most important one for people to explore, especially if they are looking to install their own rain garden, is the rainscaping education program. I know that I've already mentioned this in the podcast, but the Rainscaping Education program really goes into detail on the the design of rain gardens. It goes into how to actually install your rain garden, and it talks about the maintenance of them. Rain gardens are not maintenance free. They will get easier as they establish.

Layne: 40:49

And that is, that's a good thing. But they do take some maintenance, especially kind of at the beginning of, you know, as they're being established. And and the Rainscaping Education Program talks about those kind of three categories. You can find information on that at go.illinois.edu/rainscapingeducation. And I know that this is gonna be in the show notes as well.

Layne: 41:14

Abigail has mentioned the Red Oak Rain Garden resources. And the Red Oak Rain Garden, again, is University of Illinois Extension's demonstration site that is on the University of Illinois campus. And there are all kinds of different resources that our team has put together based on our experiences there. And you can find our brochures at go.illinois.edu/rorgresources. R 0 R G meaning Red Oak Grain Garden.

Layne: 41:49

We also have the plant finder tool, which is located on Illinois Groundwork. It's another extension in Illinois Indiana Sea Grant project that features plants specifically for green storm water infrastructure and rain gardens. You can find that at go.illinois.edu/plantfinder. Yeah. All of those are really awesome. We share those widely up here in Cook, and Erin's shaking her head. Yes. She shares them in her neck of the woods too.

Abigail: 42:22

So useful. I love like, think I mentioned earlier, those red oak rain garden brochures are so cool because they show the seasonal changes of that plant. So if you're like, well, I wanna make sure it's gonna look good in this season. I personally keep a spreadsheet of like the plants in my yard of like when it blooms and like what color it looks like.

Erin: 42:41

I love it.

Abigail: 42:41

Because I wanna have that different seasonal change. Oh, you all would go crazy over my spreadsheet. It's great.

Erin: 42:46

That's amazing.

Abigail: 42:47

So like thinking if you if you, like, it's something to have fun with. Right? Like, have fun with that project, and I also just feel like too, it's it's a little bit of troubleshooting and learning and exploring, and you're like, one year you're like, I'm gonna chop these back just to see what happens, and another year you're like, I'm gonna plant more of these because somebody gave them to me. So it's definitely it's science if you're looking to do like a little science, and it's very fun in my opinion. I like it.

Abigail: 43:14

And I love the resources that go with it, and Extension makes it really easy to, you know, ask questions. And if you're looking for something really specific, we have a lot of expertise across the state of, like, you know, this plant in particular is having trouble or I'm looking for these. We're all very, very interested in telling you more about the awesome things that we have to offer. So please feel free to reach out to any extension professional, and they'll probably get you to either one of us or or one of our colleagues across the state.

Erin: 43:44

I joke about your spreadsheet, but you haven't seen my PowerPoint slide that has all of the different design for my garden and with all my different colored dots for the different plants and what I wanna add each year and then it changes every year because you know, those weren't available but I bought other things and put them in and it's kind of intense but it's fun, so

Abigail: 44:07

I would say, you went tech. I do I just like have a hand drawing that I like kinda revisit. I'm like, oh yeah, this is what's in here and then I add to the list and stuff, but a PowerPoint slide is hilarious.

Erin: 44:19

Definitely not to scale, that's what I learned.

Abigail: 44:21

I put 18 plants in here, I can only fit four.

Erin: 44:24

Definitely. But you know, we work on it.

Layne: 44:26

I did a two scale AutoCAD drawing of my gardens back home, and every single plant that is in the entire yard, because I wanted to have a library of all the species that I have. So I basically have turned my my parents' backyard into a botanical garden. And I think at last count, I last updated it in spring, I had 137 species.

Abigail: 44:55

Wow. Thought you were gonna get plants. Was like No. No. No. No. God, I don't. I don't even want to know how many plants. A lot of money has got into that garden, but it's a it's a beautiful space. But now, a hundred, yeah, over 130 species out there, probably, I would say probably close to 10,000 plants.

Erin: 45:16

Woah.

Layne: 45:17

I mean, the red oak green garden has has 14,000, but who's counting?

Abigail: 45:22

What size is the lot of your parents?

Layne: 45:24

It's probably like half an acre.

Abigail: 45:29

Okay. Okay.

Layne: 45:30

It's not it's not huge, but there's also there's also a pool and lawn around it that my dogs Yeah. Run through. So it's not like the whole thing is planted. I also have a prairie that's planted in the field behind their house, and those numbers are not included in that 130 species.

Abigail: 45:47

Well, that's I know, like, we the Conservation @ Home Program, we see a lot of really cool yards, and like, are people who like really pack it in. And I'm like, woah. Like, and it looks good. Like, it's

Layne: 45:58

If you know what you're doing, you can really make like, when I'm talking to a new audience, I usually encourage them to kind of start small, because you don't want them to be overwhelmed. Plus, there's always gonna be a learning curve. We even did it at the Red Oak Rain Garden. We started with, you know, x number of species. And as our volunteers have gotten used to the plants, we have started to add on ones that we really wanna see.

Layne: 46:22

Right? But if you know what you're doing, you can make a really impressive, diverse garden. And that doesn't even have to include spring ephemerals, right, which like come up and they do their thing when nothing else is really doing anything. So you add diversity just by, you know, you can throw in some Trilliums and and Bluebells and I mean, if you're not staying 100% native, you can throw in some snowdrops or something like that. And you've got a whole list of amazing things to add to this garden, to add diversity, and I like doing that.

Erin: 47:06

Nice. I wanna go home and count. I'm gonna pull up my PowerPoint. Do it. I wanna know.

Erin: 47:13

It's not to have any, because I'm well, I'm a year and a half in, but that's gonna be my goal.

Layne: 47:18

This was probably I probably started planting my parents' gardens when I was 12, so

Erin: 47:22

Okay. Well, you've had a long time to work.

Layne: 47:24

I had a long time to do it.

Erin: 47:27

Awesome. Well, thanks so much Lane for sharing all of your amazing knowledge about rain gardens and native plants. It's been super fun to chat with you today.

Layne: 47:36

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.

Erin: 47:38

We're going to finish today's episode with our everyday observations, where we highlight the mundane and normal of our environment that's actually really interesting. So Abigail, what is your everyday observation?

Abigail: 47:52

Yeah. So mine's from a while back, not like a while back, but like still this year. I just love the like growing like keeping on the native plant train. I love growing the native plants in my yard because I get to know them super well, like I haven't, I did a native plant class in college and now, like I have a space that I've had for about six years to grow plants. And so, being able to grow your own plants and see them in all seasons and, like, intimately watch them and see the interactions and the ecology of them is just, something really special.

Abigail: 48:30

That's why I always encourage, like, Master Naturalists when they're trying when they wanna identify things really well, I'm, like, find a stewardship site, go to it every week, and just like, that's how you will get to know plants really well. It's like, you just are physically seeing and are at those plants all the time. We're currently doing a lot of our seed sorting because we do like a native seed donation of our of our conservation @ home yards, and then we use those to like give out at at places. And so a lot of our volunteers are currently sorting seeds, and it just makes me think like, wow, like, you don't really know what the seed of that plant looks like until you've collected it and processed it and packaged it a thousand times. You really kind of learn so much about that plant and like the different adaptations of it, you're like, actually, that's not the seed, that's the chaff because it's like what protects the seed around it, and so the seed is much smaller and you have to filter it out and everything, and so I just feel like I've I've gotten to know the plants in my yard so well, and then you learn what eats those seeds too.

Abigail: 49:30

Right? So like you learn that there's weevils on certain plants and it like, it's just like really really cool to see all of the interactions and just the the seeds themselves and how they grow and look different from the adult plant, but also look similar and yeah, it's just really I love I love to see all of those aspects of the life cycle of that plant.

Layne: 49:52

And I thought I was a native plant nerd. That's pretty that's pretty impressive. I don't think I've ever gone to that level of detail with, like, seed collection. It's inspirational, though. That's that's really cool.

Abigail: 50:05

Well, thank you.

Erin: 50:06

I love it. We're getting ready to do seed seed sorting as well with our volunteers, and it's always fun to just get, like you said, to kinda see that up close, like the full life cycle. Right? Alright, Lane. What's your everyday observation?

Layne: 50:24

So I have to admit, I haven't been able to get out into nature a lot lately, but luckily, I can see Lake Michigan from my balcony. And, you know, we're recording here in mid December, and it's been really fun to watch the waterfowl that have been kind of moving up and down the coastline here. I've seen a lot of different birds out there. We've got golden eye, mergansers. I've even seen a few bald eagles in the last couple of weeks, has been fun to see here in the city.

Layne: 50:55

It reminds me of being home, but there are, there's there's a lot more water in Lake Michigan than what I see back home. So, a little bit different, but still really nice to see all of those birds flying by.

Abigail: 51:06

So it makes makes me laugh because there's a lot more water in Lake Michigan than most other places.

Layne: 51:12

It is true.

Abigail: 51:13

Yeah. Those like waterfowl , like the Lake Michigan shoreline is like a huge birding hotspot, and I love love that you started with, oh, I haven't gotten out in nature lately, and I'm like, but nature was out your window. Right? Yes. Like that's so cool that you were you're like, I just get to like hang out. Like, I'm still doing work. I'm on the clock, but I am seeing those birds, and I love it. So

Layne: 51:36

And yeah, I'm gonna talk about it in a podcast.

Erin: 51:39

I love it. Well, I'll wrap up today. So as I've mentioned several times, I moved about a year and a half ago, and put in a bunch of native gardens, but then one of the projects that my husband and I have been working on is, you know, great, like, property boundaries between your yard and the neighbor's yard where there's some trees and then there's all the invasives that grew under it. And everyone's just decided that's where they're gonna put all their sticks, that's where all the leaves are gonna go, they're gonna dump their old plants out, probably their vacuum cleaner. We found some great stuff in cleaning that out,

Abigail: 52:14

but we I'm sorry. You were just like throwing in vacuum cleaner like it was normal. You were like, so I probably have a vacuum cleaner and dust. I'm like thinking like, buckthorn, honeysuckle, ribbit, like all the things.

Layne: 52:25

It's vacuum. It's I do have yeah. It does.

Erin: 52:29

Like, empty out your vacuum cleaner, right? And all the stuff pulled back.

Abigail: 52:32

You were saying there was a real vacuum in that, and I was like, oh.

Erin: 52:37

We found some silverware though, that was in there too. So right, it's been like this for a while. No one really cared to clean it up. Most of it, for the most part, it's on our property lines, we're like, we're gonna deal with this, right? So last fall we did a bunch of invasive removals, did kind of the first pass, right?

Erin: 52:56

And we went in, cut out a bunch of honeysuckle and privet and other just your typical invasives that you find. Right? And then we got to this fall and it was like, it's time for phase two, was kind of probably November, December, right, when all of that stuff is still green but everything else isn't, so it's really easy to tell what happened. So my husband's the real champ. He went back for a second round and got rid of everything.

Erin: 53:25

We cleared all the leaves because we're trying we had like winter creeper covering the ground, so we had to clear everything out to like get rid of all of that. And now when you look, our neighbors are probably like, what are they doing? What's going on? Because it used to be completely like dense, you couldn't see through it.

Abigail: 53:39

That was my hedge row, I didn't wanna see what you were doing back there.

Erin: 53:42

Exactly. Now there are maybe like five or six mature trees and a few shrubs in there and it's like completely cleared out. So the plan is we're going to plant like native shrubs back in there, right? And kind of create that that row again. But it's just kind of fun to like reflect on the progress that we've made and see tangibly that change in a space that most people overlook, right?

Erin: 54:05

The edges of your property is really easy to be like, yeah, we don't need to worry about that. As this podcast continues, give me three years, that's what I'm gonna say, and I'm gonna be talking about all the native plants that we've added in, and what we've the shade garden we've been able to make. But it's just kinda cool to see the progress that has happened in in a relatively short amount of time, So that's been exciting for us.

Abigail: 54:28

Season 10 theme is just gonna be Erin's yard.

Layne: 54:31

I was gonna say that that sounds like a really great blog and podcast right there. So

Abigail: 54:37

There we go. I told Erin that when she moved. I said, you should make that a blog. It's like your journey to convert a space into a native landscape.

Layne: 54:46

I that idea though. Yeah. Yeah. I like that idea of like the extension, like environment, horticulture people, what they do with their own spaces, like, being its own little series kind of sounds like fun.

Erin: 54:59

Oh. I love it. I mean, we chat about it all the time on podcasts. And I have another blog, Grasses at a Glance, for our listeners, if you haven't checked it out. And I do talk about things that I've done in my yard.

Erin: 55:11

But, yeah. It's been super fun to just experiment. And like I said, start from scratch. That's well, kind of scratch. There were plants to remove for sure, but a lot of it has just been converting lawns.

Erin: 55:23

That's been really I'm not gonna say exciting. It's not an exciting process, but Rewarding to kinda start from scratch with that. Yeah. This has been another episode on the Everyday Environment podcast.

Erin: 55:37

Check us out next week where we talk with Phil Nicodemus all about the reversal of the Chicago River.

Abigail: 55:49

This podcast is a University of Illinois Extension production, hosted and edited by Abigail Gaherfalo, Erin Garrett, and Amy Lefringhaus.