The Gustavsons’ home is run on pragmatism and surrounded by flowers.
It’s on a corner in the Swan Lake neighborhood where the plant life ranges from magnolias and spice bushes to beautyberry and aster.
Grass is scant at the Gustavsons’. Up an incline, amid leaves and blossoms and blades of ornamental grass, their small house is visible.
This kind of beauty looks like it takes a lot of time and effort, but Kevin Gustavson is not into dedicating hours upon hours to landscaping maintenance work.
“We’re not the folks who go out in the middle of the night and put up the sprinklers,” said Britta, Gustavson’s wife.
Turning problems into assets
When the couple was considering the property, Kevin Gustavson said the prospect of having to mow a lawn that large made him hesitate. Rather than being daunted, he turned the big yard into a huge asset.
Gustavson modified the outdoor space, piece by piece, utilizing rain gardens.
According to the Blue Thumb Rain Garden Guide, part of a program for which Gustavson serves as technical outreach coordinator, a rain garden is a planted depression that is positioned to capture rainwater from small storms. The water is absorbed into the soil, instead of sluicing into a storm sewer. Rather than a carpet of grass, Gustavson envisioned something like the woods, with diversity and natural dips in the land where rain collects.
If it saves money, helps the environment and creates a livable space for his family, Gustavson is interested in doing what achieves this end.
Outside of his professional life, as an environmental science college professor, Gustavson is an environmentalist. He and his wife devote conversations to the plants they’re growing, the insect life they’re supporting and the value of the natural habitat they are maintaining.
And although the plants and wildlife can be impressive aesthetically, the couple said the choice to invest in a nativescape and build the rain gardens wasn’t so much for beauty’s sake – not at first, at least. In addition to Gustavson’s uninterest in mowing or edging a lawn, one big motivator was the water seeping into the home’s basement. Gustavson said water would wash off the neighbor’s roof and sometimes run downslope to his house and flow into basement windows.
Adapting the flow
It was Gustavson’s work on watershed projects in Michigan that gave him the ideas about rain gardens. The gardens would solve the basement issues and put what would be wasted rainwater to use.
A rain garden typically hinges upon three parts: a depression, a berm and an outlet. The depressions are the areas Gustavson dug out to capture the water. The berm, a man-made earthwork created with dips and rises, is what channels the rainwater, diverting it toward the garden. An outlet, typically created with rocks, breaks the flow of water and prevents flooding during heavy rain.
The work of creating rain gardens is something of an art, but it is largely a science. Gustavson had to study the flow of water on his property before he could determine how to transform trouble zones into opportunities.
In the front of the house, a berm is placed in such a way that water from a downspout flows through a slight trench and travels clean across a slanted sidewalk into one of the gardens.
Two gates lead in and out of the backyard. At one of them is a path Gustavson created, under which a downspout is buried. During construction of one of the rain gardens, he ensured the downspout would empty into a depression where plants grow. It is a perfect environment for irises.
And near the basement, where water once washed in, Gustavson made window wells bordered by brick and then redistributed the soil in that area – more up against the house, grading down to a lower area that slopes toward the backyard. The result: Now water flows gently to the backyard and eventually into one of the family’s rain gardens in the back.
Tour lends inspiration
When rainwater runs through a lawn, into the street and ultimately to a stream, it carries fertilizer, pesticide and whatever else has been applied to the ground with it, Gustavson said. The result of the latter is the increased growth of blue-green algae, known as pond scum. Generally more of a nuisance than anything else, the naturally occurring bacteria can produce toxins and be poisonous to humans.
Gustavson works with the Oklahoma Conservancy Commission. He is concerned about water quality and its implications for living organisms, so naturally, the insects and animals that find their way to the family’s yards are welcomed.
On a recent weekend, Gustavson took careful steps into one of the gardens in search of insects. His efforts were rewarded with the discovery of a small black caterpillar perched on the edge of a part-eaten leaf.
It was perhaps this love of wildlife, nature and gardening that the Gustavsons share that sent them on a wildlife habitat tour of homes with nativescapes some years ago. The idea of using hardy plants in their own landscaping inspired the couple.
“We were exposed to more and more ideas of how to design our gardens by going on the tour and were exposed to new native plants,” Gustavson said.
He was all too happy to get rid of the grass in the front yard, on the sides of the house and in the strip of lawn between the curb and sidewalk. Some of the grass Gustavson replaced with frog fruit, an ornamental plant often used as groundcover.
“The neighbors called him the sod buster,” Britta Gustavson said. Kevin Gustavson did leave some grass however, for the couple’s daughter, Svea, to play.
Adding value to life
The initial time spent in research and construction has yielded results, the couple said. Because the gardens are saturated with rain, instead of a hose, there’s no need to consume additional municipal water, making for a smaller utility bill. Without that large carpet of grass, there’s no need to burn gasoline with a lawnmower.
The Gustavsons emphasize the importance of finding plants that adjust to the environment when constructing a rain garden. The plants that work well are ones that love moisture but also can withstand dry conditions. Firmly establishing any garden takes time and trial and error.
But this was something the Gustavsons were willing to try. They love their home and the neighborhood it is in – its history, walkability and diversity. Wanting only to add value to their way of life, making the time and resources – natural and otherwise – well-spent, the Gustavsons weigh a number of priorities when making their decisions.
“We love and want to preserve the historic nature of the house,” Gustavson said, “but we also want it to be safe for our daughter, comfortable for us and sustainable for the environment.”
Learn more about rain gardens
The Tulsa Garden Center will hold a class on rain gardens starting at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the center’s auditorium, 2435 S. Peoria Ave.
One of the newest trends in landscaping, a rain garden is a planted depression that is positioned to capture rainwater from small storms. These gardens reduce water runoff from landscapes and ultimately into nearby streams and allow what water is captured to be soaked in by the garden’s soil. Rain gardens not only help the environment, but they also cut down on energy consumption, said Kevin Gustavson, who will instruct the class.
Gustavson will cover where to locate a rain garden, how to properly size it for your landscape, how deep it needs to be and how to build one.
The lecture is $10 for nonmembers of the garden center and $8 for members. Advance registration is required.
For more information, call 918-746-5125 or visit tulsaworld.com/tgc
Growing a rain garden
When you’re planning a rain garden, you want to bring in plants that will suit the purpose of such a landscape. Gustavson recommends choosing plants that can tolerate wet but also drought conditions. Many times these are native plants but not necessarily.
A few plants great for rain gardens include:
- Purple coneflower
- Spicebush
- Aster
- Iris
- American beautyberry
- Swamp milkweed
- Sedge
- Perennial Plumbago
- Daylily
- Joe-Pye weed
The Gustavsons’ garden will be featured on this year’s Tulsa Audubon Society’s Wildlife Habitat Garden Tour, which runs 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 19 and noon to 5 p.m. May 20.
For more information, visit tulsaworld.com/tulsaaudubon
Original Print Headline: Garden that gives back
Bravetta Hassell 918-581-8316
bravetta.hassell@tulsaworld.com
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