Every Drop Counts

Until the last decade, both the irrigation industry and homeowners were focused and primarily concerned with the delivery of water rather than water conservation. 

With Colorado being mostly an arid climate and statistically the 7th driest State in the County with the metro Denver area receiving approximately an annual 15.6 inches of moisture combined from snow and rain.  Every drop counts!

The City of Englewood has already started the initiative of Rain Gardening.  You can see an example of this at Trailhead Park which is located at 1201 W. Oxford Avenue.  

Exactly what is Rain Gardening?  To me it means a well thought out landscaping design that maximize one of our most precious resources, water.  The way that our city is mostly set up now, snow and rain run off falls off our homes picking up pesticides, animal waste, oil and gas from the driveways and roads as well as other debris and heads right for our old and overburdened sewer systems into our rivers and lakes. 

With Rain Gardens, this same water run-off would be slowed down and captured in a slightly sunken area, ideally at least ten feet from our buildings.  This area by design is heavily mulched and contains a variety of native and perennial plants, grasses and flowers that not only add a beautiful and aesthetic appeal, attract and provide a natural habitat for our pollinators such as bees, birds, butterflies and other beneficial insects, but the roots system of the vegetation naturally filter and clean our water.  

With the hot summer months coming, we in Englewood are very familiar with water restrictions.  There is also an expected influx of new residents of at least 500-600 in the coming year or two.  Last year our highest day of water consumption was June 29 at nearly 11 million gallons in that one day.  Around 2 billion gallons for the year!  With about 33,000 Citizens in our city that’s about 60,606 gallons of water used per person.  [Source: Englewood Citizen Summer 2019, p. 9]

Landscapes that are high water use include Bluegrass at 20 gallons per sq foot compared to low water use, such as xeriscape to 5 gallons per sq foot and once established in 3-5 years will require watering once monthly during extreme dry weather.  That’s a savings of thousands of gallons of our precious water.  

Smarter practices such as xeriscape, native plants, Rain Gardens, and conscientious use of tap water will help conserve one of our most precious resources.   

To find out more on how to build your Rain Garden there are numerous sites on the internet.  I recommend one created by our own Colorado State University at Stormwatercenter.colostate.edu.