Rain Garden History

How Did Rain Gardens Get Started?

Rain gardens, or bioretention systems, were first conceived of in 1990 by stormwater specialists in the state of Maryland. Since that time, a number of people, municipalities and organizations have influenced and enhanced the rain garden movement in the United States.

The First Rain Gardens

The first rain gardens were our native ecosystems. Before our lands were settled, rain was filtered through soils, roots, and plants in our native forests, wetlands, and meadows. Most of the water that entered our surface waters was cool, clean groundwater. Our wealth of streams, rivers and lakes was naturally clean.

When European settlers cleared the land and built communities, the natural water-cleaning systems were removed. Our streams and rivers became more and more degraded as water ran off the land instead of being taken up by plants, soaking into the soil, and filtered by soils and wetlands.

Rain gardens were invented as a way of imitating the function of these natural filtering systems that development removed. Infiltration was already in use, where stormwater is stored to soak into the ground. However, the introduction of plants to the system was a new idea for stormwater engineers.

Maryland Rain Gardens

Rain gardens and bioretention originated in Prince George's County, Maryland. Larry Coffman, head of the county environmental programs, was investigating cost effective, lower maintenance methods to improve infiltration systems for septic systems and to improve water quality in stormwater handling installations. He and his team came up with the idea of bioretention, or holding and filtering stormwater in plant systems, and then coined the term "rain gardens" which is a term that most people find very attractive. Coffman told us, "Believe it or not -it took us about 2 hours to finally put rain and gardens together! This pioneering stuff is hard work!"

"I began to realize that we could use the functions of the upland ecosystem (plants, microbes and soils) to treat stormwater water runoff. One other factor influenced my thinking and that was the studies we were getting back on BMP's (Best Management Practices) efficacy showed there were major problems with cost, maintenance and

operations. So I got the idea of designing the green space in a parking lot to treat/infiltrate the runoff," Coffman said.

After doing a literature review, they discovered there were no guidelines for using infiltration and bioretention. They had to develop all of the principles and design standards from scratch. They found it to be feasible based on how plant/soil filters technology had been successfully used in water treatment and wastewater treatment in the past. Since they were developing a practice that would be in an upland area they also brought in the sciences of forestry, soil science and agriculture. Transferring technology from all of the related fields of science they came up with the first bioretention design guidelines in 1993. The goal was to design bioretention to mimic forest or meadow functions.

In 1997 in cooperation with the University of Maryland, they began a monitoring program to test the pollutant removal of bioretention and optimize its design.

"Since then we have improved the design and learned about the whole new world of the complex and wonderful plant/soil/microbe ecosystem, andhow to use nature to protect nature and make things prettier too, " Coffman told us.

The Bioretention Manual of Prince George's County, Maryland, is available for download and is a wonderful resource.

Minnesota Rain Gardens

The City of Maplewood, Minnesota, working with designer Joan I. Nassauer, Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Michigan, created lovely formal homeowner rain gardens that set a new standard for attractiveness. This 1996 project took the rain garden movement even farther by making a rain garden, and stormwater management, part of an accepted formal landscape element for residences. Joan Nassaur's professional skills, and interests in both landscape design and in watershed planning, resulted in lovely garden designs that are very well accepted in Maplewood. The project was funded in part by Legislative Commission on Minnesota Resources.

Michigan Rain Gardens

The Southeastern Oakland County Water Authority started a rain garden project in the Rouge River Watershed. A rain garden was installed in Lathrup Village in 2002.

A statewide effort led to the publication of a Low Impact Development manual for Michigan.

Rain Gardens of West Michigan was established as one of the many water quality programs of West Michigan Environmental Action Council, http://www.wmeac.org Grand Rapids, Michigan, in the fall of 2002. For more information about our rain garden projects, please investigate this website.

The Kalamazoo Nature Center, in partnership with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the Kalamazoo Watershed Project, installed a rain garden in the Axtell Creek Watershed in Kalamazoo. Engineering studies began in the summer of 2002.

Wisconsin rain gardens

The University of Wisconsin Extension and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources have an excellent rain garden program headed by Roger Bannerman, and published helpful documents and websites about their activities in 2002.

Source: Rain Gardens of West Michigan. http://www.raingardens.org/Rain_Garden_History.php