Always be attracting bees, hummingbirds, beneficial wasps…

Bulbs, seeded flowers, flowering bushes, ornamental trees. There are lots of ways to bring in color to your cottagecore rain garden without sacrificing the goal of trapping and sinking as much water as possible into the soil and filtering rain run-off from your home.

Flowers with bulbs help to prevent erosion with their massive root systems and spreading natures. It takes a lot of water for a plant to make a huge bulb and a lot of water will be coming through your rain garden. So if you’re looking for a low maintenance way to grow lots of blooms without having to do a lot of handwatering, tulips, lilies, alliums, and other bulb-producing flowers are not only perennial, but are water-loving and resilient.

There are other, somewhat more tricky ways to add color to your rain garden that won’t necessarily be helpful in attracting the birds, bees, and butterflies. Giant grasses like bamboo have culms that come in a vast range of colors from the bright yellow of the Asian Lemon Bamboo to the dusky white of the Ghost Bamboo. There are also black bamboo plants if you’re looking for something dark and striking.

Other colorful ornamentals that do well with heavy watering are Japanese Maples, peach trees, banana plants, and elephant ears.

Here is your chance to add the biggest, most robust, fast-growing, water-loving plants you’ve always wanted to grow, weeping willows and Japanese Maple trees and lilies. Be careful about where you put weeping willows. Their roots are known to be invasive and should not be planted nearby and structures you wish to remain standing…i.e. your house. This can be compensated for by extending your rain garden to its furthest possible point and planting a weeping willow at the end of it.

Other great choices for choosing plants with super robust root systems include swamp cabbage, horseradish, inland sea oats, rush plants, and sweet potatoes, which have several ornamental and edible varieties.

In fact, if you happen to be interested in growing food, sweet potatoes are an excellent crop to grow in a rain garden as they are very easy to grow, tolerate wet feet (are water-loving), and are easy to plant. Ornamental sweet potatoes are just as easy to grow, though without the benefit of producing edible tubers with the rain run-off from the roof or poorly-drained street.