Garden Consultancy & Training
Garden Consultancy & Training
Do something different with boring downpipes! Here’s a few of Wendy Allen’s latest projects featuring bendy downpipes, rain chains and rain planters (also known as stormwater planters).
Rain planters can be used at the base of a downpipe or rain chain as an aesthetic solution to managing the flow of rainwater. They help to reduce flash flooding by slowing the flow of rainwater and reducing the amount of rainwater which enters the drain. They can form part of a sustainable drainage system (SuDS).
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More info to come soon, these two cor-ten steel rain planters were designed and installed by Wendy Allen in collaboration with John Little (Biodiversity/Brownfield consultant) and Susanna Grant (shade plant specialist ) at University College London with Blanche Cameron and students from UCL/Bartlett School of Architecture. Part of SustainableUCL’s Wild Bloomsbury plan.
The original attention-grabbing Wendy Allen Desings project in 2018 for Action for the River Kennet. Rain travels down bendy downpipes, though clear sections, down rain chains and into water butts and rain planter galvanised cattle troughs. The rain planters store, slow and filter rainwater to reduce localised flash flooding and surface run-off.
BBC Wiltshire Radio 20th August 2017
Rhiannon Fitz-Gerald interviews garden designer Wendy Allen about the unusual new rainwall at Preshute Primary School, Manton, Wilts.
The new downpipes and guttering expertly realised and installed by Cotswold Rainwater Services.
These rain planters were designed by Wendy Allen and built with the help of volunteers at Chilton Foliat Primary School. In this entrance area, the gullies frequently overflowed. By disconnecting the downpipes and diverting the rainwater down (copper) rain chains and into rain planters instead, surface water flooding has been completely eliminated.
The rain planters are weldmesh circles filled with recycled broken paving slabs and lined with an EPDM liner. Drainage pipes, planter fill and plants are then added to store and slow rainwater.
An Action for the River Kennet project funded by North Wessex Downs AONB.
Two rain planters feature on the front elevation of Shalbourne Primary School in Wiltshire (as part of a larger project design which also has a rain garden, see Rain Gardens in Schools).
The photo above shows the rain planters just after planting, the photo below below after establishment just three months later. Lengths of gutter with drilled outlet holes help distribute the rainwater evenly along the length of the rain planter.
Part of the Sparkling Streams project with Action for the River Kennet, funded by Green New Recovery Fund with North Wessex Downs AONB, Hungerford Town and Manor and Southern Streams Farmers Group.
Sealed at the base, a downpipe allows rainwater to build up and squirt out of two holes into a rain planter, with excess water overflowing to another rain planter where it turns a water wheel.
Many varieties of Carex tolerate both drought and short periods of saturated soil, and have fibrous roots suitable for the limited soil depth in a rain planter. Other useful plants for a rain planter (in part-shade ) include varieties of Hosta, Polypodium and Polystichum.
The Preshute Primary School rainwall can be seen from Manton High Street and attracts a lot of interest.