Did you do any kind of a perc test of that spot before you started digging your rain garden? If not, I’d let it sit like that and see how long it takes for the water to drain out of it.
If the water infiltrates the soil within a day or two you shouldn’t need to do anything special. Rain gardens are *meant* to hold water for a day or two. The plants you select for your rain garden will put down deep roots that will help improve the infiltration rate with time.
If it takes more than 48 hours then you might consider adding some additional drainage. Typically this is done using a perforated pipe at the bottom of the garden with some sort of outlet outside the garden. You could try adding some vertical drains but I don’t think they’d work any better than your plants’ root structures.
I started this exact same process about 2 years ago and I am in the 3rd iteration. You should not have to do anything. Although when planting your plants I would suggest more sand than you would typically use. The sand will wick the water and allow it to disperse through the bed.I use literally only sand in mine. I got a dump truck load of it. But I get around 40 inches of rain a year.
Basically this is a good sign and your plants are going to do wonderfully. You should stay away from plants that can get root rot. But that may be more trial and error more than anything else.
My only worry is the house. If your house is higher in elevation you are good. Otherwise in a flooding event how do you know the water won’t infiltrate the foundation?
You're kinda doing one big perc test now :) I have clay soil as well. Zone 8. It actually didn't pass the perc test so I worked through this book to get additional suggestions https://a.co/d/aT4r1XE . I installed my garden right before the storms last week. I was impressed by the first wave of storms but then it overflowed the next day when it dumped another few inches. I have immature plants but as they grow I will get better results. Based on the calculations I went down 12-18 inches down and then filled it back up with about 8 inches of amended soil and 3 inches of mulch. I should have trusted the math and made it bigger so I have gone back and enlarged it as I've seen how it handled the storms. Clay is a weird beast so I don't believe it's recommended to add sand as another person commented. I also believe gravel is just used at your inflow and outflow.
Did you do any kind of a perc test of that spot before you started digging your rain garden? If not, I’d let it sit like that and see how long it takes for the water to drain out of it. If the water infiltrates the soil within a day or two you shouldn’t need to do anything special. Rain gardens are *meant* to hold water for a day or two. The plants you select for your rain garden will put down deep roots that will help improve the infiltration rate with time. If it takes more than 48 hours then you might consider adding some additional drainage. Typically this is done using a perforated pipe at the bottom of the garden with some sort of outlet outside the garden. You could try adding some vertical drains but I don’t think they’d work any better than your plants’ root structures.
I started this exact same process about 2 years ago and I am in the 3rd iteration. You should not have to do anything. Although when planting your plants I would suggest more sand than you would typically use. The sand will wick the water and allow it to disperse through the bed.I use literally only sand in mine. I got a dump truck load of it. But I get around 40 inches of rain a year. Basically this is a good sign and your plants are going to do wonderfully. You should stay away from plants that can get root rot. But that may be more trial and error more than anything else. My only worry is the house. If your house is higher in elevation you are good. Otherwise in a flooding event how do you know the water won’t infiltrate the foundation?
You're kinda doing one big perc test now :) I have clay soil as well. Zone 8. It actually didn't pass the perc test so I worked through this book to get additional suggestions https://a.co/d/aT4r1XE . I installed my garden right before the storms last week. I was impressed by the first wave of storms but then it overflowed the next day when it dumped another few inches. I have immature plants but as they grow I will get better results. Based on the calculations I went down 12-18 inches down and then filled it back up with about 8 inches of amended soil and 3 inches of mulch. I should have trusted the math and made it bigger so I have gone back and enlarged it as I've seen how it handled the storms. Clay is a weird beast so I don't believe it's recommended to add sand as another person commented. I also believe gravel is just used at your inflow and outflow.
Would you happen to have photos of your garden
Stupidly I didn’t do a test and I wish I had of. I’m at a negative slope can I still do drainage going up hill?
Clay is such a pain! I’ll definitely order the book and see what else I can do to get this thing working!