Maintaining Your Rain Garden

04 Jul Maintaining Your Rain Garden

The Seattle Public Utilities Rain Wise residential Rain Garden maintenance instructions.

Fasoldt Gardens has installed over 150 residential Rain Gardens in Seattle.  While this is original information we share with our customers, these maintenance instructions will apply to any raingarden owner who wishes to preserve the organic integrity of their storm water retention system.

1. For a newly planted Rain Garden, water 2-3 times a week from May-October (the Seattle dry months) for the first 2-3 years.  Water deeply: imagine soaking each plant to a depth of 12″.  You can water by hand or by running a sprinkler for around 30 minutes.  It’s best to weather in the morning.
2. Weed by hand in Spring, Summer and Fall.  Do not use synthetic fertilizer or weed killer.
3. Replenish the mulch bed annually (2-4″ deep).  This will help the garden to preserve water,    to fertilize the plant roots and to reduce weeds.  We use North West Garden Mulch produced by Cedar Grove.
4. When the garden is wet, minimize walking in the basin to prevent soil compaction.
5. Keep the rockery-armored inflow and outflow areas free of debris and weeds, these rookeries should protect the berm from erosion.  Rearrange the small rocks if necessary.