One Texas-based gardener recently shared with their TikTok followers an ingenious method of taking flood water and turning it into a way to cultivate more plants.
"We got a much needed rain last night," JennieGardens (@texasgardening), an Austin-based Landscape Designer & Gardener, informed their nearly 45,000 TikTok followers. "[So] I wanted to show you how the rain garden works. This corner is a low-lying area in my yard. A lot of runoff comes in here when we have a storm event."
@texasgardening My simple DIY rain garden after a storm. #texasgardening #centraltexasgardener #gardening101 #landscape #gardenproject #raingarden ♬ original sound - JennieGardens
Jennie went on to explain how they created a rain garden by digging down until she hit limestone, creating an area for the stormwater to pool, and then surrounded it with thirsty plants. "This allows the water to infiltrate slowly, over the course of the next day or so, and it waters all the roots of this tree and all the plants around here," she said.
To some, this simple DIY rain garden seemed like it might be too good to be true.
"Does it go down within a day or two? I'd be worried about mosquitoes otherwise," one commenter asked. This led Jennie to post a second TikTok video, four hours later on the same day, showing just how fast the plants sucked up all the water.
@texasgardening Replying to @KT 4 hours later and it is already finished draining out this time. It's a catch and slow release, but not too slow, which keeps mosquitoes from being a big issue in there. #texasgardening #centraltexasgardener #gardening101 #landscape #gardenproject #raingarden ♬ original sound - JennieGardens
"I wanted to show you, it has already fully drained," Jennie said. "... The soil and the aquifer here just gobbled that all up … I've never seen it [take] longer than about a day or a day-and-a-half" to drain, leaving no time for mosquitoes to complete their breeding.
Rain gardens are a great way to work with the environment instead of fighting against it — especially when you surround your rain garden with native plants, which are already adapted to the amount of rainfall in your area and will provide food for crucial pollinators, helping the entire ecosystem.
As is often the case when someone posts their rain garden on main, the comments section was full of jealous gardeners who now wanted one of their own.
"Love this idea," one commenter wrote.
"Looking into this! Thank you!" wrote another.
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