One Redditor recently took to the r/vancouver subreddit to share an image of a new rain garden handling its first rain.
The rain garden pictured here is known as the St. George Rainway. It was conceived by a group of volunteers who eventually got backing from the city for their project.
A rain garden does much more than just add aesthetic value — in this case, it will also help to reduce street flooding, filter rainwater pollutants from the roadway, and cool the neighborhood during hot summer months.
Rain gardens aren't just for roadsides, either. In fact, you could even create one in your garden. Rain gardens capture and direct rainwater using well-placed stones and native, water-tolerant plants with deep roots. They can even save you lots of money on watering your lawn, instead passively distributing rainwater throughout the area.
They also tend to work even better than many people expect them to, absorbing large amounts of rainwater in a matter of hours.
Other Vancouver-based Redditors were overwhelmingly happy to see this neat, beautiful, and useful bit of urban design.
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"This is so cool looking. Wouldn't the rain wash the soil away onto the road though?" one commenter asked.
"The water was moving pretty slowly, getting absorbed as it flowed into the garden," the original poster replied. "Apparently a good rain garden is designed knowing roughly how much runoff to expect. The depth of the depression, the size of the rain garden and type of soil are all chosen by the garden designers with that in mind. Plus the plants chosen for the garden have deep root systems to handle big soakage."
Someone else wrote: "Yeah I love everything about this project. Really cool to see something 'uplifting' being installed once in a while."
"All hail the drain garden!" another user said.
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