If you have a lawn or yard that usually puddles up when it rains, you might be interested in a free offer from FP Environmental Associates, the environmental group working with the town and the Conservation Commission.

FP Environmental is offering to visit your property and suggests solutions to most drainage problems you may have and then design these solutions for free.

This will be free until our grant ends later this year.

Interested? Contact FP Environmental at [email protected] .

What are some of these possible solutions?  An easy one is the simple, old fashioned rain barrel. We had one in back of the house I grew up in. A downspout from the gutter directed the rainwater into the barrel.

My mom was an avid gardener, but we had a dug well, and along about August or so, we began being pretty careful about our showers and use of water.

That’s when the rain barrel came in handy. I was given the job of toting watering cans of water from the rain barrel to my mom so she could water her flowers and veggies.

Another solution is the rain garden. Rain gardens are often somewhat sunken gardens created where storm water accumulates. Some rain gardens help direct the flow of water to a drain or to a larger area, such as ground cover, shrubbery, or trees.

You might also take a look at the rain garden in back and along the side of the Dunaway Center and the ones on the north side of the Towne Lyne Motel. FP Environmental will conduct a special garden tour of these rain gardens this Tuesday, June 7. Meet at the Dunaway Center at 5:30 and enjoy the whole tour.

Where we live, we had a teardown down hill from us, but when the new house was put up, the builder raised the property so we were now a little downhill from our downhill neighbor!

We soon had run off from their property and so their landscaper simply dug a small trench that caught most of that runoff from their lawn and allowed it to flow into their flower garden – a simple solution that cost just minutes of work. Of course it has to be maintained from time to time.

Our house is perched on the edge of a slope, and that’s where our drainage goes. Between us and the next property at the bottom of the hill, we have trees, bushes and ground cover– perfect for catching storm water runoff.

So there are easy, natural solutions to storm water drainage problems.