With time on your hands and extra helpers at home, creating a beautiful and functional rain garden in your home landscape is an ideal family project. A rain garden collects water from your roof through a downspout and holds it in a shallow depression like a bathtub, until it soaks into the ground within 48 hours. The garden is planted with native and adapted perennial plants and small shrubs that can thrive in wet soil, attract pollinators, and provide year-round color in your yard. Installing a residential rain garden is a do-it-yourself home project that all in the family can enjoy.
Extension is committed to helping Nebraskans know more about creating resource- and energy-efficient rural and urban landscapes, protecting and managing water resources, properly managing insect and wildlife pests, and more.
Active in all 93 counties and at communityenvironment.unl.edu
Horticulture, Landscape, and Environmental Systems
David Lott, Horticulture Extension Educator, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension in North Platte
Storms inflict significant damage to gardens and landscapes across Nebraska each year. Initial reactions to storm damage can be overwhelming when trying to decide what steps to take to start the recovery process. Here are some simple tips to help find a place to start in the recovery process to reduce further damage to the landscape and anyone who is helping in the process.
Jim Schild and Gary Stone, Extension Educators, Scotts Bluff County
The single biggest use of water in the average western Nebraska household is irrigating the Kentucky bluegrass lawn.
But there are two alternative turfs that allow homeowners to manage water more efficiently: tall fescue, a cool-season grass, and buffalograss, a warm-season grass. Each has advantages and disadvantages.
By Jim Schild and Gary Stone, Extension Educators, UNL Panhandle Research and Extension Center
Fertilizing a turf grass lawn is a lot more than just buying a bag of fertilizer and spreading it all in the spring.
There are several decisions to make. One is how much fertilizer to apply; another is when to apply it. And spring is not the best time to apply most of the year's fertilizer.