Debra Horner has a natural yard and rain garden on her property.
By: Mary Genson | Birmingham-Bloomfield Eagle | Published April 14, 2026
BIRMINGHAM — Birmingham is encouraging residents to build rain gardens in their yards. To make the process more accessible to the public, the city put together a step-by-step guide to building a rain garden at home.
This is a program that Birmingham has been thinking about for a couple of years. In 2024, the city applied to be granted a fellow from the Graham Sustainability Institute at the University of Michigan as a part of the Catalyst Leadership Circle Fellowship. The city was granted a fellow, Paige Hughart, who helped draft this program. Hughart is credited as the writer and designer of the guide on the front cover; it was edited by Planning Director Nicholas Dupuis.
According to the Birmingham Rain Garden Program Guide, “Rain gardens are shallow depressions, refilled with appropriate soil, planted with native plants, and covered with mulch.”
Through this program, the city is able to better track how much stormwater they infiltrate or capture and measure it for the Birmingham Green: Healthy Climate Plan.
The city is offering technical support to participating residents.
“Rain doesn’t have boundaries, so we want to try to encourage people to capture more rain on their own private properties,” Dupuis said. “So we’re trying to make it easier for them by providing this step-by-step planning implementation guide.”
Benefits of starting a rain garden
Rain gardens have environmental and practical benefits to residents and the surrounding community.
Debra Horner is the chair of the city’s Environmental Sustainability Committee and has a natural yard with a rain garden on her property in Birmingham.
“What it’s going to do is allow us to have less wasted water into the sewers, more retention of water — so, less watering of yards — and then also, we’re going to, hopefully, encourage people to plant native plants as well, so it is going to promote bees, butterflies, insects of all kinds that are really helpful to the environment and Birmingham in general. So it’s kind of a multi-pronged approach for sustainability in Birmingham,” Horner said.
Before having a rain garden, they often experienced puddles of rain on their sidewalk, she said. Her rain garden has shown year-round benefits, even in the winter.
“A practical benefit of it in the winter was not having big icy sheets on the sidewalks, because there’s less water puddling there because of the rain garden,” Horner said. “So even in the winter, we were getting a benefit from it, and then in the summer, we were seeing that we didn’t ever have to water our yard, because all of the rain water was kept on our lawn, into our yard, our native plants, instead of running into the street and into the sewers.”
How to join the program
To join the program, residents fill out an application for new rain garden installation. Completed forms are to be emailed to Summer Aldred-Arens at saldred-arens@bhamgov.org. Then, residents can start building a rain garden at home with the help of the Birmingham Rain Garden Program Guide.
Once a rain garden has been built, residents can go on to complete the credit to stormwater utility fee form and email it to saldred-arens@bhamgov.org. Through the stormwater utility fee, residents can get credits on their water bills for implementing certain practices such as rain gardens, rain barrels and more. More information on the stormwater utility fee, such as the size of the credits, can be found at bhamgov.org.
“This is one of many approaches we’re taking to mitigate what seems to be an ever-increasing stormwater problem in not only Birmingham, but everywhere. So this is just one piece of the puzzle,” Dupuis said. “We are encouraging people to try it out. We’re hoping to get some action on it this year. We’re hoping to get an opportunity to help people design their gardens and make them as best as they can be, and then, hopefully, start a trend.”
For more information, visit bhamgov.org/about_birmingham/city_government/sustainability_and_climate_action/rain_gar den_program.php.