From a modern raindrop's perspective, the earth's surface can be divided into two types: slick and squishy. Or if you're an urban planner, impervious and pervious. Impervious surfaces include almost the entire city, from roofs to driveways. Pervious surfaces include kitchen sponges and the squishy floor of the primeval forest.

Here's what a raindrop experiences as it falls in downtown Seattle today:

Wheeee! SPLAT. Wheeee! Holy %&$#!, is that the ocean again? Wheee! SLURP. Ommmmmm.....

All the raindrops hit the ground and immediately make a run for the ocean. Some are slightly detained, spend some time in a puddle. But mostly, there's a surge following the rainfall that frequently overwhelms the stormwater systems, then slows to a trickle.



In Seattle, this means big problems. When there's a storm, the stormwater pipes aren't sized to handle the load. Rather than flood the streets, the city opens up the sewer lines to discharge the rain. This system, called Combined Sewage Overflow, means that after a storm, certain parks smell like an outhouse.

This has led the city to think about gardens differently. Gardening is no longer a hobby. It's going to save the city millions of dollars. That's because gardens, especially those kept in cover crop during the winter, diminish the runoff problem for cities. Soil improvements intended to help plants also improve the soil's capacity to detain water. The slowed water recharges the subsoil, feeds the aquifer, or passes into plant roots and escapes as water vapor through plant leaves. Our gardens can do this even more effectively if we consider how water passes over the garden surface.

This neighbor created an (ugly) berm, trapping water before it hits the street.



Imagine how attractive it could have been, had it been planted and maintained by this gardener:



Here in Seattle, we'll never recreate the primeval forest and gently tread soils that predated the city. But Seattle Public Utilities is trying to engineer little pockets of healthy soil that will absorb some of the runoff. Recently on my street, the city ripped out a piece of the roadway and replaced it with a pocket of highly engineered piece of landscaping.


The landscape “bulb” interrupts the little stream of water that flows down the side of the road on its way to the storm drain. There's one on each side of the street. I saw the excavation for these bulbs, they go several feet deep. In some ways, they're like French drains - a large volume of porous soil temporarily stores water. The water is then slowly allowed to trickle into the surrounding clay. The builders used a number of other little tricks to slow down the water: they built a little dam in the middle. Wetland plants bind the soil and turn some of the water into vapor. There's a flat overflow area like an estuary (remember estuaries?). If any water makes it through this series of obstacles, it passes through a rocky filter that says “where are you going with that dirt?” before the water finally escapes to the storm drain.



Recent lawsuits have given this kind of project a new importance in Seattle. Next week, I'll talk about what happens when Seattle takes a neighborhood with no functioning stormwater system and gives it a natural drainage system that approximates the primeval forest.

I recently had the opportunity to record a conversation between a couple of writers for a magazine. One of the writers kept this garden out behind his house. He'd sit for long periods in his run-down chair, drinking his coffee and staring at an apple tree as it fought to escape the encroaching blackberry vines. Who can watch that struggle without intervening? A good listener. Someone who's ego doesn't need to fix everything.



How do you imagine this writer's work would vary from a writer who hung out at in the gardens at Versailles?


This photo by that kat chick, shared via Flickr.

If you're not a gardener, gardening can sound pretty intimidating - planning, weeding, watering and fending off various predators for months at a time - and unless you are growing edibles, your reward may only be a pretty picture. Those of us who are already invested wouldn't give it up for the world, but we want you to give it a try, too - and there's no better way to start than with containers.

These two books - Little Herb Gardens, by GeorgeAnne Brennan and Mimi Luebbermann, and The Ultimate Container Gardener, by Stephanie Donaldson - each contain numerous projects that can be completed in an hour or an afternoon, but will provide enjoyment for weeks and months afterward. Even if you think you are hopeless with plants, these charming arrangements will make you want to try again. And if have a "real" garden, like me, you'll find yourself flipping the pages with increasing restlessness and finally heading out to the basement or tool shed to get some use out of those old pots you'd almost forgotten about.

Little Herb Gardens was the book that inspired us to begin our own herb garden several years ago, mere months after moving into our house. I've mentioned before that herbs are almost impossible to kill; a loose definition of the word might be "a weed that people have figured out how to use in cooking." Once established in the ground, they rarely need watering, and they will produce until the first frost; I have even dug through the snow to find sprigs of thyme in February. Most of them re-seed themselves and come back year after year to delight you with their fragrance and flavor. And if you've never cooked with fresh herbs, you can and should afford the luxury!



The book begins with some basic information about herbs in general, listing the most common annuals and perennials; it then gives some basic information about the best conditions for soil, watering and fertilizing. (We're talking eight pages total, and half of that is pictures!) Projects are then grouped by location: Fire Escape for city-dwellers, Inside Porch, Outside Porch and Patch of Ground for suburbanites, and Vast Vistas for those with a little more breathing room. Each project fits on a double-page spread, with a lovely, inspiring photo, a specific list of materials, and guidelines for where and when to place the plants. Most of the suggested herbs are fairly traditional, but there are a few, like green garlic and nasturtiums, that I had never thought of growing indoors and will certainly try now. At the end, there's a brief section of recipes that can be adapted for many types of herbs: flavored oils, vinegars and desserts.

The Ultimate Container Gardener is a far more extensive and adventurous book, and it favors more decorative arrangements than practically useful ones. However, the photographs are seductive in the way only do-it-yourself photographs can be; if you are familiar with DK books, you will be especially intrigued. The plants for each project are pictured separately, so that you can bring the book with you to the garden center and compare; then there are several step-by-step instructional photos and a photo of the end result, pretty but simple enough to make you think you could do that!

There is another section on gardening techniques and tools; it's longer than the one in Little Herb Gardens, but it does include lots of helpful photos of, for instance, how to propagate a plant from a cutting, and several methods for pest removal. These projects are grouped by several different variables: color scheme, season, and location. There are also special sections of projects for children, plantings that are edible or especially fragrant, and lots of ideas for decorating containers with shells, paint and a variety of other media. Altogether, there are probably 150 projects, and there are very few duds, at least for my personal taste (I have never really understood the garden-in-a-boot thing) They range from very simple to somewhat complex; the common thread is that all of them can live on your porch, deck or fire escape. A little water and sunshine, and a lot of admiration, are the only requirements.