Rain Gardens: Helping Nature in Your Own Front Yard

Target Audience: Homeowners, green industry professionals, landscape designers; anyone with a general to specific level of landscape knowledge that would like to learn more about rain gardens.

Issues Addressed: Illustrates through a Flash animation format the basics of rain garden planning and design for effective stormwater management at a residential scale, and illustrates and explains why each principle or rule-of-thumb is critical to overall garden success. Most important, it explains the functional attributes of gardens below the ground surface which are difficult for audiences to visualize but are never-the-less important to garden success.

Distribution: the animation was developed over several years and final edits stretched into early 2010; distribution was initially planned for direct access through extension web sites but was held up until early 2011. The animation is now available through a link on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Water Website within the Property Design and Management section (http://water.unl.edu/web/propertydesign/home).

Resources Involved: The animation was developed through an internal University of Nebraska-Lincoln extension grant totaling $7,500. The grant paid for storyboard development, animation development and editing, and final production. Steven Rodie worked with/directed Patty Morner in animation concept development and Patty was responsible for the overall technical design and execution of the animation. In addition, the rain garden model that serves as the basis for the animation was conceptualized and designed by Steve Rodie and Tom Franti, and built and photographed by Steve Rodie.

Evaluation Results: Since the animation has only recently been made available to target audiences, no evaluation results are yet available. An additional web link to some brief evaluation questions is being planned so that feedback on the impact value of the animation information delivery and format can be solicited from animation viewers.

Implications for Future Programming: Copies of the animation are being developed for use in rain garden workshops and Master Gardener training presentations to focus delivery of critical rain garden design information. In addition, the animation is being reviewed for possible reworking as a youth or 4-H instructional animation incorporating stormwater cartoon characters that would help explain the workings of a rain garden and the water quality benefits associated with landscape and soil filtering of runoff.

Files

Rain Garden Animation

This file is in Flash format and is best opened in a browser such as Mozilla or Explorer that has a current Flash Player add-on file already loaded. The file can also be accessed through a link on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Water Website in the Property Design and Management subsection, front page at the top under the Virtual Rain Garden Simulation title: http://water.unl.edu/web/propertydesign/home