Rain Garden and Swale Upkeep Expectations Review Checklist

Ask the designer directly whether the feature is part of the site drainage or only planting, and record the answer in writing.

Owners are often told what a feature looks like and never told what it is for, which is the part that governs its care.

Ask whether it is lined or open to the ground, and where water leaves it, keeping the answer with the feature's record.

The same planted hollow built the two ways empties by different routes, which changes what any later observation means.

What a feature is and how it drains is established by a qualified drainage professional from the design rather than from how it looks.

Ask what areas of roof, paving or ground send water to it, and mark those areas on a plan of the garden.

What arrives sets how hard the feature works, and it explains behaviour that otherwise looks like the feature misbehaving.

Ask where water goes when the feature is full and rain has not stopped, and whether anything at the surface marks that route.

That route crosses ordinary garden and is the part most easily removed by later tidying or a new raised edge.

Ask what would stop the feature doing its job, and write the answer as a list of prohibitions rather than as general advice.

The prohibitions are the part almost never volunteered, and here they are the part that matters most.

Ask for the feature to be named as drainage on the garden plan, in words a gardener would understand without further explanation.

A feature that is not written down as drainage will be maintained as a border by whoever comes next.

Ask what would happen if somebody improved the soil here in the way they would improve a border, and record the answer.

Improving the ground is the most instinctive kind thing to do to a planted area and is worth asking about specifically.

Ask whether mulch may be used at all, and if so what kind and where, rather than assuming the usual garden answer applies.

Mulching is routine everywhere else in a garden, which is exactly why it reaches this feature without anybody deciding to.

Ask what happens if somebody tops the area up with topsoil to level it, since a dished area reads as a fault to most people.

The shape is usually the function, and the shape is what a tidy eye most wants to correct.

Ask when and how the planting may be cut, and whether there are times of year when it should be left alone.

Cutting regimes for a feature like this are frequently different from the rest of the garden and are rarely passed on.

Ask whether walking, standing a mower or running a wheelbarrow across it matters, and record what you are told.

Compaction is invisible, cumulative and caused by people doing something entirely reasonable on their way past.

Ask whether the edges may be cut, re-formed or given a hard edging, and what would be lost if they were.

Edges frequently define where water enters and leaves, and re-forming them is ordinary seasonal garden work.

Ask what the feature looks like in each season, including the worst-looking weeks, and ask to see something rather than be told.

Descriptions of seasonal planting are generous; the question worth answering is what the dullest month actually looks like.

Ask whether water is expected to stand in it after rain and roughly under what conditions, and record what you were told.

Standing water is normal in some arrangements and a warning in others, and a household that does not know which will assume the worse one.

What standing water means in a particular feature is a matter for the drainage designer rather than something to read from its appearance.

Note where the feature is seen from, particularly from inside the house, and whether that changes how much untidiness is tolerable.

Tolerance is mostly a function of what is visible from a kitchen window, and it is worth naming before the position is fixed.

Consider who else sees it, including neighbours and visitors, and whether anybody is likely to comment on it looking neglected.

Outside comment is what most often triggers the tidying this feature cannot survive.

Ask what tends to collect in a feature of this kind, and what may and may not be removed when it does.

Some of what collects is part of how the feature works and some is not, and only the designer can say which is which here.

Say plainly at this stage if the household will not live with how it looks, rather than agreeing and quietly correcting it later.

A feature nobody will tolerate is better replaced at design stage than disabled after a wet winter.

Ask for the recurring operations this feature needs, listed individually, and write a name or a role against each one.

General upkeep belongs to nobody; a named operation against a named feature can be given to somebody.

Ask which operations need somebody with particular knowledge and which are ordinary garden work, and mark the two kinds separately on your list.

Separating arranged work from routine work early stops a specialist task quietly becoming a volunteer one.

Ask when in the year each operation happens, and check that against when the household actually does anything in the garden.

Work that falls in a month nobody goes outside is work that will not be done, whatever anybody agreed.

Write down honestly how much time the household gives the garden now, rather than how much it intends to give it.

Intended upkeep is the assumption behind most features that stop working, and the correction is free at this stage.

Ask what happens when whoever maintains the garden changes, and how the next person would learn what this feature is.

The feature outlasts the arrangement to maintain it, and the handover between gardeners is where the knowledge is lost.

Decide who holds the feature's record and where it is kept, so it is not attached to one person's memory.

The record is a component of the feature in the same sense the planting is.

Ask what the feature needs during a long dry spell, particularly while planting is establishing, and who would notice that it needed anything.

Upkeep conversations about a drainage feature concentrate entirely on wet weather, and the dry end of the year gets left out.

Put the list of operations the feature assumes next to what the household actually does, and mark every line that has no owner.

The unmatched lines are the finding, and they are only visible when the two lists are on one page.

Ask whether a different arrangement would ask less of the household, and what would be given up by choosing it.

There is usually more than one way to deal with the water, and they ask different things of the people living there.

Which arrangements a particular site permits is a determination for the drainage designer, and the options are set by the ground and the outfall rather than by preference.

Ask what happens if an operation is missed for a season, and record the answer rather than assuming it is cosmetic.

Some missed operations are cosmetic and some are not, and an owner cannot tell the two apart without asking.

Whether a missed operation changes how a feature performs, or only how it looks, is a determination for the drainage designer rather than something to judge from appearance.

Ask what an owner might notice that would suggest the feature has stopped doing its job, and write the answer down verbatim.

Without that sentence there is nothing to watch for, and the change is found by a wet floor rather than by looking.

Record how the feature behaves and looks while it is new, with dated photographs from fixed positions, before anything has changed.

Later change cannot be distinguished from how it always was unless somebody wrote down how it always was.

Write down the decision you reached and what you accepted about the upkeep, dated, and keep it with the garden records.

A recorded decision explains the feature to the next household in a way nothing else on the plot will.

Ask what would be involved if the household later wanted the feature changed or removed, and who would have to agree to that.

A feature doing a drainage job is not simply a border to be redesigned, and learning that early prevents a costly assumption.

Whether a feature forming part of a drainage arrangement may be altered or removed is a determination for the drainage designer and the relevant authority.

Write the instruction on one page in plain words rather than handing over a design document nobody will read.

A handover pack is filed; a single page kept where the tools are is occasionally looked at.

Put what must not be done at the top of the page, before anything about what should be done.

The prohibitions are what protect the feature, and they are the part that gets read if only the top is read.

Give a one-line reason for each prohibition, since somebody told only what not to do will eventually decide it looked wrong.

A reason survives a change of personnel in a way that a bare rule does not.

Ask whether anything can reasonably mark the extent of the feature on the ground, and what would be appropriate here.

Where the feature ends is obvious to whoever designed it and invisible to whoever is strimming.

Give the same page to occasional help, contractors and anybody who cuts the grass once, not only to a regular gardener.

The one-off visit is where this goes wrong, because the briefing is always aimed at the regular arrangement.

Arrange to go through the page with whoever maintains the garden after a full year, and note anything that did not work.

A year is long enough for the seasonal jobs to have come round once, which is when the gaps become visible.