Rain gardens are ingenious designs that allow water to cycle back into the ground, helping to filter pollutants and replenish your soil’s water reservoirs. By carefully choosing the right plants, you can have a thriving and beautiful design. These rainwater garden plants are ready to take on the stormy skies.
Rain gardens are incredible gardening designs for rainy climates AND to redirect water runoff. If you’re new to the concept of rain gardens, I encourage you to check out my introductory post on what makes a rain garden and the fundamentals of design.
In most cases, we direct all our water runoff away from our property and into the city/town’s stormwater system. That, or it’s pooling in our yards, creating muddy puddles. Neither is ideal, as we want that water to return to the earth where it naturally would have fallen.
Rain gardens are designed to let water pool and naturally sink back into the earth, where it can restore the groundwater reservoirs. In turn, our gardens are better suited for periods of drought down the line.
Choosing which rainwater garden plants to place is essential, since they need to tolerate waterlogged soil at times, while the top of the design needs to be able to tolerate drought. It’s a fine balance.
Here are some of the best rain garden plants to get you started.
- The Best Plants for Rain Gardens
- Drought-Tolerant Rain Garden Plants
- Slope Rainwater Garden Plants
- Moisture-Loving Plants
- Shrubs and Trees for Rain Gardens
- More Tips for Smart Water Design
The Best Plants for Rain Gardens
The best plants for your rain garden are native plants. They’re already perfectly suited for your local weather and soil conditions, will require less maintenance, and use less water than non-native plants. Plus, wildlife will love it too!
You’ll want to include a combination of evergreens and deciduous plants, including trees, shrubs, grasses, and groundcovers. This combination will help provide shade and year-round greenery.
Choose plants that will fit in with the rest of your garden. A rain garden can be adapted to many different styles, ranging from a carefully curated ornamental space to a meadowlike and wild garden.
When choosing the plants for your rain garden, make sure you’re considering their full maturity size. You want to space them apart for when they reach full size.
Make sure to leave room to access and maintain the plants for any necessary weeding, pruning, or replanting.
Also note that rain gardens are designed to help filter pollutants from water drainage from the house and street. This makes it not suitable for growing vegetables and other edible plants.
Drought-Tolerant Rain Garden Plants
When designing a rain garden, it doesn’t lie flat. Like a pond, it slowly slopes down and allows the water to pool at the base.
This means that the top is designed to have water drain away from it. The plants planted here prefer drier conditions and can be drought-tolerant.
- Aromatic aster (Aster oblongifolius)
- Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia)
- Blazing star (Liatris spicata)
- Blue oat grass (Helictotrichon sempervirens)
- Butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa)
- Creeping phlox (Phlox stolonifera)
- Daylily (Hemerocallis spp.)
- Fountain Grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides)
- Karl Foerster feather reed grass (Calamagrostis acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’)
- Lavender (Lavandula)
- Lithodora (Lithodora diffusa)
- Little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium)
- Prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis)
- Purple coneflower (Echinacea)
- Sword fern (Polystichum munitum)
- Tall Tickseed (Coreopsis tripteris)
- Western bleeding heart (Dicentra formosa)
- Wild ginger (Asarum caudatum)
- Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)
Slope Rainwater Garden Plants
Rainwater garden plants that are planted on the slope of a rain garden will occasionally be wet. They can handle a mixture of wet and dry conditions. They are also used to stabilize the slope with their root systems.
- Blue Fescue Grass (Festuca spp.)
- Crimson flag (Hesperantha coccinea)
- Daylily (Hemerocallis spp.)
- Giant camas (Camassia leichtlinii)
- Hop sedge (Carex lupulina)
- Lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina)
- Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum)
- Sword fern (Polystichum munitum)
- Western columbine (Aquilegia formosa)
- Wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis)
- Wild geranium (Geranium maculatum)
Moisture-Loving Plants
The moisture-loving plants like and tolerate wet and moist soil conditions. They sit at the base of the rain garden where the water pools and then seeps down into the soil. This is the wettest part of the garden.
- Bee balm (Monarda didyma)
- Blue flag iris (Iris versicolor)
- Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis)
- Dagger-leaf rush (Juncus ensifolius)
- Deer fern (Blechnum spicant)
- Henderson’s checker-mallow (Sidalcea hendersonii)
- Joe-pye weed (Eutrochium purpureum)
- Lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina)
- Oregon iris (Iris tenax)
- Pink or Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata)
- Slough sedge (Carex obnupta)
- Small fruited bulrush (Scirpus microcarpus)
- Snakweed (Persicaria bistorta ‘Superba’)
- Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum spp.)
- Taper-tipped rush (Juncus acuminatus)
Shrubs and Trees for Rain Gardens
When planting a rain garden, try to preserve existing vegetation such as perennials, shrubs, and trees, as they’re already great at soaking up stormwater. Just make sure to consider their root systems when planting to avoid harming them.
If you don’t have any larger shrubs or trees already, try including them in your design to help provide shade and interest!
- Western serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia)
- Alpine spirea (Spiraea densiflora)
- Black chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa)
- Cascara (Frangula purshiana)
- Douglas spirea (Spiraea douglasii)
- Dwarf bush honeysuckle (Diervilla lonicera)
- Indian plum (Oemleria cerasiformis)
- Mock orange (Philadelphus lewisii)
- Pacific ninebark (Physocarpus capitatus)
- Persian ironwood (Parrotia persica ‘Vanessa’)
- Potentilla (Potentilla fruiticosa)
- Red-flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum)
- Red-twig dogwood (Cornus sericea)
- Salal (Gaultheria shallon)
- Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis)
- Smooth hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens)
- Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus)
- Vine maple (Acer circinatum)
More Tips for Smart Water Design
- Design a Rain Garden to Redirect and Filter Rainwater
- 7 Ways to Reduce Water Usage While Gardening
- Climate Change and Flooding: How Your Garden Can Help
- Design a Dry River Bed and Solve Your Drainage Problem
- Xeriscape Principles: Gardening for Water Conservation
A city girl who learned to garden and it changed everything. Author, artist, Master Gardener. Better living through plants.
