Rain Garden Design - Adelaide & Adelaide Hills

SUSTAINABLE STORMWATER MANAGEMENT, DESIGNED TO LOOK GOOD.

Photograph of a natural creek feature in the SOAK garden at Royal Adelaide Show 2025. Adelaide Hills sandstone and softened with planting.

A rain garden does two jobs at once: it slows and filters stormwater runoff before it reaches the drain, while giving a genuinely beautiful, low-maintenance planting feature in the process. Instead of water rushing off your roof, driveway or paving straight into the stormwater system, a well-designed rain garden captures it, lets it soak in slowly, and puts it to use growing something worthwhile.

We brought this thinking to life at the Royal Adelaide Show 2025 with SOAK, our climate-ready display garden combining dry creek beds, rain gardens and resilient planting to capture and hold rainwater rather than send it down the drain.

As a full-service landscape design and construction company, we design rain gardens as part of your wider garden, not as an isolated drainage fix. We work out where water naturally wants to go on your site, shape the garden bed to hold and filter it, and plant it out with species that can handle both a heavy downpour and a dry Adelaide summer. The result is a feature that looks intentional year-round, not a boggy patch that only makes sense when it's raining.

WHY CONSIDER A RAIN GARDEN

A rain garden isn't just a drainage solution - it's a genuinely useful, good-looking addition to a sustainable garden.

  • Reduces stormwater runoff into the street and drainage system

  • Filters pollutants out of runoff before it reaches waterways

  • Reduces pooling and erosion around paving, paths and entries

  • Supports local wildlife and pollinators with the right native planting

  • Makes use of water that would otherwise be lost to the drain

  • Adds a genuine planting feature, not just a functional fix

WHERE STORMWATER MEETS Garden DESIGN

This Thebarton project turned a water-sensitive design brief into a strong landscape feature, transforming existing bluestone into a dry creek bed that does real work managing stormwater on-site.

Fed by a stormwater pipe from the roof, the creek bed lets water permeate naturally into the ground rather than being piped straight off the property. It's a rain garden approach that integrates stormwater into the landscape itself, adding texture and movement to the garden while quietly doing the job of a drainage system.

Photograph of bluestone natural creek feature fed by the stormwater with planting around

Frequently Asked Questions

  • rain garden is an area designed to capture stormwater runoff from a roof, driveway or paved area, holding it long enough to filter and soak into the soil rather than running straight into the stormwater system. It can take different forms depending on the site and design - from a planted garden bed to a dry creek, gravel channel or even a small pond.

  • No, when designed properly, a rain garden drains within a day or two of rain, and is planted with species that handle both wet and dry periods. It shouldn't hold standing water for long enough to become a mosquito or waterlogging problem.

  • We assess how water moves across your site, design the size, shape and planting of the rain garden as part of your overall landscape design, then build it to hold and filter water effectively.

  • It depends on the scope of the works and how it connects to existing stormwater infrastructure. We can advise on this as part of your project and coordinate any approvals required.

MANAGE STORMWATER, BEAUTIFULLY

We can design and build a rain garden that puts your stormwater to work, adding a genuine planting feature to your garden rather than a drainage afterthought. Tell us about your project using below or for urgent enquiries, call 0432 070 862.

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