Rain Garden Plants For Your Permaculture Food Forest

Maximize your food harvests by making the most of the rain. These food-growing plants love heavy watering.

1Stone Bamboo (Phyllostachys Angusta)

Stone Bamboo thrives well in a moist soil and I have found that even when bamboo remains too moist for too long and loses some of its rhizomes, this helps to add more humus to the soil and the bamboo plant grows new rhizomes. 

This is a beautiful, yellow/olive-colored bamboo that will need to be kept in check with root pruning, a root barrier, a trench which will become a moat during a heavy rain, or by planting your bamboo in a planter. 

2Giant Leaf Bamboo (Indocalamus Tessellatus)

Giant Leaf Bamboo is often used to reinforce the banks of water bodies including lakes and streams, making it highly tolerant of very moist soils and water-loving. As with other bamboos, its root system will help knit the soil together to keep it from being washed away during a vigorous rain. This is a very helpful quality to look for in your rain garden plants as they make sure the water stays to sink into the ground, keeping more water for the longer term in your rain garden and in your landscape.

3Sweet Shoot Bamboo (Phyllostachys Dulcis)

A gorgeous, tall-growing bamboo that gets to about 40 feet. Its tall canopy helps to eliminate the impact of rain on the ground beneath, slowing it down and also preventing it from washing your soil away. Sweet Shoot Bamboo is also the most popular bamboo for its tasty shoots though lots of bamboo plants have palatable shoots.

4Taro

Taro is a great choice for a rain garden that hasn't been well-amended and may be in a heavy clay soil that turns into a pond in heavy rains. Taro grows well in bogs and will thrive in those wet areas of your yard, which will help them to grow even faster, giving you more leaves and roots for your table. 

5Inland Sea Oats (Chasmanthium Latifolium)

This lovely grass is often sold as an ornamental but also produces oat seeds that are edible. Although it is drought tolerant, it also enjoys moist soils, which will help it to grow even faster, producing a lovely meadow of tall, soft grass and a lovely network of roots and rhizomes to help sink water into your rain garden and keep soil right in place. 

6Blue Arrow Juncus (Juncus Inflexus)

7Asparagus

Asparagus has continued to surprise me with its tolerance for, and love of, heavy watering and water-logged soils. Asparagus plants have deep, thick roots that go down far and create lovely paths in the ground for water to sink into during rain time. 

Plant a whole hedge of asparagus crowns in your rain garden to create a green wall of this wonderful vegetable. 

8Bananas

Banana plants have one of the highest water-holding capabilities of any plant. The thick trunks and large leaves are great for using as mulch and stay joist for long periods time, helping you to put all that good rain water to use in helping newly planted plants have a consistent supply of moisture while getting established. 

Banana plants also need lots of water in order to grow as quickly as possible to get to maturity and produce fruit.

9Sugar Cane

10Sweet Potatoes

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