Rain gardens: understanding their benefits and their beauty^©

INTRODUCTION
Rain garden systems are one of the most commonly utilized stormwater control measures (SCMs) to capture and remove pollutants [such as nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), and total suspended solids (TSS)] from stormwater runoff (Davis et al., 2001, 2009; Hunt et al., 2012). They are constructed by excavating the existing soil within the landscape and refilled with 0.7-1 m of a sand/soil/organic matter engineered filter bed substrate (Davis et al., 2009). They are then planted with vegetation (Liu et al., 2014; NCDENR, 2009). Rain gardens can be placed in many different landscape scenarios. They function well for containing and remediating polluted stormwater runoff because of their two main components: (1) the engineered filter bed substrate (EFBS) and (2) the vegetation.