A county in Florida is offering cash incentives for residents to install gardens to beef up their homes' capacity to soak up stormwater.
As WGCU reports, Sarasota County is overseeing the RainCheck program. The scheme offers rebates to homeowners who install small-scale best management practices (BMPs) for stormwater infiltration in their own homes. BMPs include unconventional options like rain gardens and bioswales.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, a rain garden is a depressed area in a landscape that efficiently absorbs rainwater into the ground. This reduces stormwater runoff and helps prevent infrastructure from being overwhelmed.
Per WGCU, one couple who chose to install a rain garden explained that after incentives, the garden was basically free: "I think it's great. I mean, we spend $527 and then receive $500 from the county through the RainCheck program."
The other mentioned garden fixture, a bioswale, is quite similar in function to a rain garden. A bioswale is essentially a natural alternative to a concrete drain. It's lined with native plants that absorb and filter pollutants from rainwater.
In states with frequent extreme weather events like Florida, local measures like this are an ideal way to mitigate the impact of storms and flooding.
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Other states have similar measures in place to encourage homeowners to adopt more eco-friendly gardening practices. At the other end of the scale, municipalities in drought-ridden Arizona have incentives for homeowners to plant drought-resistant local flora.
Ditching a water-guzzling grass lawn for a natural one isn't just a good bet for the environment; it's a great way to save money and effort. Rewilding a yard involves gardening with plants naturally attuned to the ecosystem, meaning much less maintenance is needed.
Jennifer Rudolph, leader of the RainCheck program in Sarasota, installed a bioswale in her yard. Finding it much easier to maintain than a grass lawn, she commented on the beautiful simplicity of it all, telling WGCU, "It rains, it grows, and everything's happy."
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