It’s cold in Minnesota about seven months of the year, and rainy for about two more. That’s not a complaint, it’s just an observation. I actually love all the seasons. Each has it’s own effect on my garden. Thankfully, the soil here is rich and the rapid changes in the weather make my flower beds nice and airy.

I love sharing stories about my flower beds, but my most recent gardening adventure didn’t happen there. It actually took place in an area of my yard that’s not counted in my lot dimensions. It’s the area along the boulevard in front of my house. It collects a ton of standing water during the Spring thaw and then all through the rainy months.

It used to hold a deep water puddle for weeks after a hard rain. The neighbor kids loved to splash and play in it until it dried up. I just ignored it. I would mow up to the edge and then not think about it until the next time I started the lawnmower. That is, until the day I received a nice note directly from a City Inspector. It stated very clearly that I was 100% responsible for fixing the boulevard hole and any continued maintenance of the area for reasons of public safety.

Here I thought I had been mowing the area every week out of the kindness of my heart. Go figure?

Heeding the warning, I was all but ready to fill the area with dirt and rocks and maybe slap a piece of sod over it. Instead my husband decided we should try planting a rain garden there. So, we started researching online and found some great resources, like this one.

We settled on using bog plants, different grasses, some seasonal flowering plants that would be happy with very wet or dry roots. The majority of the plants we use are available in most planting zones. We also created a couple shallow valleys by digging a bit so the overall appearance would match the hole that was collecting all that water and attention from the inspector. We chose to top the entire area with pea gravel. There are many options to finishing a rain garden with stone, but the pea gravel looks pretty when its wet.

The City Inspector hasn’t stopped by to comment on the home we apparently built for the local Monarch butterflies, or the new bathing place for all the birds after a heavy rainfall, but they sure seem to appreciate it. We’ve also noticed that the water doesn’t run into the storm drain like it used to, and we haven’t had to do any maintenance on the garden at all.

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