Waterfall Overflow to Rain Garden

 The Pondless waterfall in front of Homme's Landscape was built by Homeowners during a "Build a Pondless Waterfall Day."  Knowing we were going to build it again, we decided not to put an auto-water fill on this unit and chose to top it off with a garden hose when it got low.  On occasion the person filling the waterfall would do other things while the hose was running and the overflow would run down the street.  Our solution was to build a little rain garden to demonstrate how to capture water run-off.

Our plan was to excavate a low point from the bottom of the waterfall and direct the overflow into a pit.  The pit would be planted to create our garden.

We also wanted to keep the natural look of our waterfall.  With the excavation, our backdrop didn't look good.  So we created a land bridge to allow water to pass under our backdrop and keep our soil.  The guy's installed a culvert and buried it with the excavated soil.  Then they dressed the ends of the tube with boulders and rock to hold back the soil and hide the tube.

 Once the land bridge was finished it was time to create our rain garden.  On the outlet side of our drainage, a pit was created to capture the run-off.  The guy's were careful to make the bottom of the rain garden level so the water would disperse evenly.  They also created a berm on the downhill side of the garden to give it a little depth.  After everything was in place, the plants were installed and we gave the overflow a test run.

The rain garden functions nicely and will be nice to look at once it develops.

  http://www.hommeslandscape.com/HowToBuildaRainGarden.html