Early last year I put together a rain garden in our yard to absorb some of the driveway drainage. Here are a few pictures of how it looks now!
Inside the garden we have a variety of perennials that are generally carefree and tolerate a wide range of growing conditions. Plants like coneflowers. Echinacea purpurea is having a perfect year here in our garden.
If we change our focus a little we can view the gladiola. One of the few summer blooming bulbs I’ve added to the gardens. They look really nice when they stand upright but have a terrible tendency to topple toward the turf! Those little green bamboo stakes would be good to help stake them up if necessary.
The pale pink blends nicely with the purple of the coneflowers but the gladiolas look great all by themselves as well.
Asclepias tuberosa or orange butterfly weed is a fantastic, easy care perennial. It doesn’t transplant very well due to the large tuber so if you decide it needs to be moved you had better move much of the dirt around the roots as well. You’ll see butterfly weed growing along roadsides and it grows readily from seed planted directly in the garden.
Here you can see the golden rod’s placement next to the coneflowers. It should look very neat with the purple and gold colors blending together in the late summer raingarden.
One of the two kinds of ornamental grasses in the raingarden is Miscanthus sinensis ‘Zebrinus’ also known as Zebra grass. I took advantage of the setting sun to capture some back lighting for the photo. You can really see the variegation in the leaves of grass.
Due to Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day on Wednesday (and poor planning on my part) I’m delaying Worst Weed Wednesday until July 29th. Wednesday July 22nd isn’t an option since I’ll be unavailable for blogging that day. I’ll post a reminder toward the end of next week!
That Coneflower looks great, I started some from seed yesterday. You will love the Zebra Grass, I had a huge one at my house in KY, I wish I had brought a small clump of it with me.
Jake
The glad looks really nice withe the coneflower.
Goldenrod and coneflowers look good together….one of my favorite combinations. gail
Great pictures, Dave. The coneflower is awesome and I love the glads too!
Your rain garden is really thriving Dave. The Goldenrod contrasts beautifully with the Purple Coneflowers, nice combo! Have you been getting much rain this summer? We finally got almost an inch today and my rainbarrels are full again. 🙂
Beautiful Rain Garden! What a treat to be able to visit today. 🙂