Rain Garden & native plants

The rain garden shown here was put in some time ago now but just finished today with bark. I dug up some Carix Obnupta and Dagger Leaf rush, both native wetland grasses from the pond in my back yard to plant here. We used the rocks dug up from excavation to decorate the garden bottom & set it apart from the rest of the yard. I tested the soil for drainage and we should be able to disperse most of our runoff into this rain garden. The downspouts will be hooked up soon to run to the raingarden.

Today I worked on installing plants with a majority being native varieties. Some of our plantings: Lots of Salal, Kinikinik, some Oregon Grape, Evergreen Huckleberry, Sword fern, and Penstemon. Also put in a Red Flowering Current which is one of my personal favorites and have an Alaskan Cedar to plant.

Other plants; 3 varieties of Heather and a Rhododendron (both somewhat similar to native heather), Nest Spruces and a couple of other miniature conifers.

The garden is doing very well now and producing a variety of vegetables. I put in a couple of apple trees last week as well as 2 blueberry bushes. The whole garden area gets lots of sun which really helps in our area.

Green Features Post #1 The Site

Some of the green features of the Sunnyland Sunhouse

Starting with the site;

1) Infill lot close to shopping,schools,bus lines,restaurants, & easy freeway access.

2) Replacing dilapidated old house that was pretty much uninhabitable.

3) The new house will have a small footprint preserving the large yard on King Street.

4) The new house will not block the sun from the house to the north.

5) Existing plants were saved where possible; one lilac was moved because it was in the way and the other was preserved in place. These will give privacy to the street. A large mock orange bush was saved and these are considered a native plant I believe. Several sword ferns were dug up and transplanted in my yard.

6) Much of the excavated soil will be kept on site for grading and creating a large gardening area. We were fortunate to have such great topsoil that the excess was given away to gardeners by the pickup load. I imagine that the future owners of this place will enjoy raising some of their own fruits and vegatables.

7) we will be landscaping with natives and other lower water use plants. One exception is the Pink Kousa Dogwood street tree (a Chinese form of our native dogwood that is more pest-free)
may need a bit of summer watering though I have one in my yard and it has had little if any watering once it was established. It has incredible flowers and is one of my favorite trees and so I just had to include it!
Also plan to install some fruit bearing things like blueberry bushes.

8) Will be putting in rain barrels for use in watering the garden and to reduce our water runoff.

9) Exceptional solar exposure. Of course this requires a design to take advantage of the potential but that will have to wait for another post.