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.

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.