Storm Water Collection System Helps Recover Garden
For nearly two years, Georgia’s long-running drought was the least of worries for Bill Everitt and Amelia Fusaro. Oddly, it was the occasional rain that was causing their problem in their mature Buckhead garden.
The problem was severe storm-water runoff from a neighbor’s property that left the couple so frustrated that they no longer could enjoy their own backyard.
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| This dry creek bed serves as an integral part of the rain water collection strategy. |
After Amelia heard Mark Fockele speak on rainwater collection, she and Bill engaged The Fockele Garden Company team. The resulting plan not only addressed the storm-water issue but also included a pond and re-circulating stream. The crews began work and a few weeks later, the couple’s dreams came true. Their gardens were restored – and even better than ever.
“For approximately two years, we suffered through a backyard flooding problem,” Bill said. “I would look out my window and see a disaster. Now, thanks to The Fockele Garden Company, I walk out my back door and enjoy a small paradise, every day, right here in Buckhead.”
Bill and Amelia commended The Fockele Garden Company crew for its professionalism and attention to detail and appreciated the pride and quality in their work.
“Over the years, we have had a lot of projects completed at our home with a number of different contractors,” Amelia said. “Mark and his team were by far and away the most professional and attentive to detail.”
Parting the Waters – How We Did It
The Fockele Garden Company’s solution to Bill and Amelia’s nightmare consisted of a series of systems that slowed the runoff, temporarily stored large volumes of water on site, promoted infiltration of the water into the subsoil, and captured some of the water in a cistern that could be used for irrigation and for operating a re-circulating stream.  |
| The Fockele garden Company has installed many rainwater cisterns of every shape and size. |
The first obstacle was to ease the strong flow of storm water that traveled down the couple’s sloping backyard toward their house. To accomplish this, we installed two dry stream beds that slowed the water and sponged it into the subsoil.
So how do the dry stream beds work? Each stream bed lies above a trench containing a perforated pipe encased in gravel. The gravel is draped in filter fabric, which in turn is covered with river rock. When storm water enters the dry stream bed, it immediately filters through the river rock, fabric, and gravel and finally into the perforated pipe. From there, the water is slowly dispersed into the surrounding subsoil. Once the dry streambeds are completely saturated, the excess flows into a 500-gallon underground cistern.
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| The finished product, an integrated system of reflecting pond, dry creek bed, rain collection cisterns, and a re-circulating stream. |
When the cistern reaches capacity, the water overflows into the final segment of the system – a bog that can hold approximately 1,500 gallons. The bog is planted with a mix of plants tolerant of occasional inundation, such as a cypress tree, summer sweet, hibiscus, ferns, and rushes. Much of the water in the bog then seeps into the surrounding soil; some evaporates; and some is absorbed by the vegetation and subsequently transpired by the plants as water vapor. Even if the bog were filled to capacity, it continues to slow the flow of water so that the eroding power is substantially reduced.
The new system received its first big test in January of this year when the Atlanta area was hit with six inches of rain in two days.
“I’m pleased to report the system handled the torrential rains extremely well,” Mark Fockele said. “The owners have a gazebo in their garden that used to flood with every heavy rain. That is not happening anymore, because the storm-water system performed beautifully.”
In addition to the storm-water system, The Fockele Garden Company installed a pond and re-circulating stream. The pond also can be used for irrigation if the cistern were ever depleted. Finally, The Fockele Garden Company also installed a 1,300-gallon rainwater pillow under the deck. It collects water from downspouts and supplies water to a four-zone, automatic irrigation system. Now, no city water is needed to water the plants. The underground cistern also feeds a back-up manually operated watering system.
"People are absolutely blown away when they see our garden,” Amelia said. “With the pond, the stream beds and the plantings, they think it is a botanical garden or a national park. These are people who have been coming to our house for a long time. One comment they all make is it does not look like a new installation. It looks like it has been there forever.”
With a little ingenuity, the waters that used to cause such headaches were harnessed and redirected to the benefit of Bill and Amelia’s garden. The entire project is organized around the rainwater problem, but after installation of the pond and natural plantings, it would never occur to a visitor that the garden was designed for anything other than beauty. It was a project that encompassed many innovative aspects of rainwater collection, any number of which – from the dry stream beds to the cistern and water pillow – could be used to solve your own storm water issues or provide you with the means to store rainwater for irrigating your garden.
