When my husband and I were first looking at the house we eventually bought, it was late fall and everything was pretty much dead, but it was apparent that there was some sort of landscaped area underneath the leaves in the southeast corner of the backyard. During the walk-through with the housing inspector, our realtor noticed that there was a shallow trench leading from the end of the downspout at the corner of the house to the edge of the landscaped area.

“Oh, it’s a rain garden!” my realtor exclaimed.

“Oh, cool!” I responded, pretending that I knew what a rain garden was and thinking that it sounded just lovely.

Then I promptly forgot about it until a weekend-long torrential downpour the following spring, when the “rain garden” quickly morphed into something out of a scene from Swamp Thing. (I should also mention that I once found our dog happily gnawing on a squirrel carcass in this same spot, so God only knows what else was living or decomposing in this corner of our yard.)

I remember walking out onto our deck and looking out at the carnage in horror. A cartoon-y image of a giant spooling cash register receipt totaling thousands of dollars popped into my head, because that was surely how much the solution to this problem was going to cost. Here’s a photo that I took before I ran back into the house, sobbing. (OK, not really, but I was definitely in a state of panic — even though, miraculously, our basement was and still is bone dry).

My next step, naturally, was to post said photo on Facebook and crowdsource solutions. The post garnered two dozen comments, which fell into five main categories:

1. Contact a landscape architect or designer for help.

2. Install a rain barrel.

3. Redirect the downspout.

4. Plant a tree (a willow was the most popular suggestion).

5. Install a French drain.

Ultimately, we decided to explore all of these solutions except the French drain. Here’s how it went.

Step 1: Contact a landscape architect or designer.

I contact a local landscape designer named Jennifer Markel of Cloud Landscape Design that I found on Houzz and asked if she could come out for a consultation. She was wonderfully helpful in explaining what we already had growing, what we should transplant, what we should take out and what new things we should plant.

For the rain garden area, she suggested the following:

• Reinstalling the rain barrel.

• Contacting a drainage expert.

• Planting a dogwood and some hydrangeas, and removing some things that weren’t doing so well there (namely two azaleas, one of which went ahead and died on its own). I liked the idea of planting new things but was already feeling pretty overwhelmed with her suggestions for the rest of the yard, so I filed away her plans and resolved to tackle the rain garden that fall. (That didn’t happen, but we’re finally making some progress on new plantings this fall — more on that later in the post.)

Step 2: Install a rain barrel.

When I read the rain barrel comments on my Facebook post, I suddenly remembered that on previous visits to the house, I had seen one attached to the downspout, on top of the concrete pavers on the left-hand side of the above photo.

Then I recalled an offhand comment that the previous homeowner had made during the closing — that she had taken the rain barrel with her because she was a “treehugger.” She neglected to mention that the rain barrel was likely a key cog in this whole messy machine. Obviously, if there was a rain barrel collecting much of the rainwater, not as much would end up in the rain garden, right?

And as luck would have it, as soon as we started researching options, friends of ours who own local brewery Fibonacci Brewing and who are passionate about horticulture and urban farming generously offered us a brand-new one that was too small for their needs. And this rain barrel was not the flimsy plastic number I was envisioning: It was the heavy-duty, 58-gallon “Salsa Rain Barrel System with DiverterPro” from Fiskars. (I don’t know how this company that I thought made only scissors got into the rain barrel business, but I’m glad they did.)

We installed it with help from our friend Brendan, and I immediately noticed an improvement after the next big rainfall. The rain garden and surrounding area still got pretty soggy, but it was not nearly as bad as it was pre-rain barrel.

Plus, since I have treehugger tendencies myself, I was really happy to be able to water my plants with rainwater that spring and summer and rather than chemical-laden tap water. And I’m sure it helped keep our water bill down too, although never having spent a growing season here without the rain barrel, I don’t have a real comparison.

PRO TIP: Make sure to drain and disconnect the rain barrel in the winter. We totally didn’t think to do this last year and ended up with a solid block of ice inside the barrel last winter. It was pretty comical and I’m sorry I don’t have any photos of it. I’m also amazed the thing didn’t crack. Thanks for making a quality rain barrel, Fiskars!

Step 3: Explore redirecting the downspout.

At Jennie’s suggestion, we did contact a local drainage company to give us an estimate on redirecting the downspout elsewhere. They said it was possible to run the downspout along the side of the house and connect it with one coming off of the garage, which runs underground to the street. But with the estimate coming in at close to $1,000 for the work, we decided to put off that project indefinitely.

Step 4: Buy a tree.

That brings us to where we are this fall, nearly two years after we moved in. We ended up not planting a tree in the rain garden last fall as I had planned because we planted a native tree called a fruitless black gum in the front yard instead, thanks to the surprise news that our little Village of Silverton offers a limited number of free trees to residents every year. All of Silverton’s tree options required more sun than that shady corner of our backyard, and the application also favored trees that could be seen from the street, so we decided that planting one tree was enough of an undertaking for one fall.

Jennie had recommended planting a dogwood in the rain garden (which is in the southeast corner of our backyard) and a Rising Sun Redbud in the southwest corner of the yard because they’re both smaller trees that would do well under the mature shade trees in other areas of our yard and our neighbors’ yards. But since we ended up building a fire pit in the southwest corner of our yard instead of planting a tree, both options were on the table for the rain garden.

For the heck of it, I decided to get a second opinion on what I should plant in the rain garden at Natorp’s Nursery Outlet, which is my favorite garden center in Cincinnati because they have everything you could ever want to plant at reasonable prices and are ridiculously nice and helpful.

Plus, they offer free landscape design consultations, which I took advantage of in this case. The landscape designer I talked to also recommended that I plant a redbud in the rain garden, surrounded by various bushes and perennials. More plants = more things that would soak up rainwater, he explained. I decided to make the tree decision first and headed to their massive tree department, where another helpful employee showed me probably about a dozen different varieties of redbuds.

Again feeling somewhat overwhelmed by all the choices, I took pictures of all of the signs of various redbuds and went home to do more research. I didn’t know what a Rising Sun Redbud looked like when Jennie had first suggested it, and the few that they had in stock at Natorp’s were all green, but once I saw photos online of Rising Sun Redbuds in different seasons, I was smitten. I mean, how cool does this look?

And here’s a cool video showing how the Rising Sun Redbud changes throughout the seasons:

My mind was made up. A few weeks later, I dragged Tank back to Natorp’s, thinking we’d buy the tree and have it delivered, but they actually managed to fit it in the back of my Volkswagen Golf. I decided to hold off on buying other bushes and perennials because I didn’t know how much we’d tear up the rain garden with the tree planting, and I figured we could always plant those in the spring if worse came to worse.

Step 5: Plant the tree.

Because we bought the tree on a Sunday and because football, we put off planting it until this weekend. I made sure to water it about every other day while it was still in the container, even though the weather was cool and there wasn’t much of a chance that it was going to dry out.

Before we planted the tree, I removed the small azalea from the rain garden that has never bloomed and transplanted it to a garden bed on the west side of my house, just south of my zinnias and Black-Eyed Susans and in front of two Sorbaria sorbifolia 'Sem' bushes that I planted last year (they were fuller in the spring and summer but are getting kind of scraggly now that it’s fall).

Then, each armed with a shovel, we followed Natorp’s tree planting instructions to the letter (my abridged and annotated version is below):

1. Lay a tarp next to where you will be digging for easier cleanup. (We didn’t do this when we planted the tree in our front yard last fall. Big mistake — the dirt pile killed all the grass next to the tree. Lesson learned!)

2. Remove sod from the planting area and soil from the hole and place on the tarp.

3. Dig a hole minimum of 6-8″ wider than the root ball on all sides and slightly shallower than the root ball is deep.

4. The top of the root ball should be slightly higher than the original ground level (1-2″ for smaller plants and 2-3″ for larger plants and trees).

5. Amend the soil from the hole with compost or Pine Soil Conditioner, with a ratio of approx. 20-30 percent amendments to 70-80 percent original soil. Mix and chop together; this is the backfill used for planting.

6. Remove the plant from its container and inspect the roots. If roots are entangled or grow in a circle, massage the outer roots apart. If too tight, use a knife or pruners to loosen. This encourages roots to grow out into the surrounding soil and improves water penetration into the rootball.

7. Place the loosened root ball in the center of the hole and make sure the top of the root ball is slightly higher than ground level.

8. Use the amended soil and fill in around the root ball, chopping and lightly tapping as you proceed. Continue filling until the backfilled soil is at the shoulder of the root ball (not on top).

9. Once finished planting, place 1-3″ if good quality mulch on top of the newly planted area and on top of the root ball.

10. Water thoroughly (get more watering tips here).

With both of us working, it probably took us only a couple of hours to dig the hole, plant the tree and backfill it with the 80 percent soil/20 percent pine soil conditioner mixture. Then I used the rest of the pine soil as mulch around the base of the tree, being careful to avoid the trunk. Here’s the finished result:

I zoomed in for that first shot because the rest of the area looks pretty raggedy right by comparison. It’s hard to tell right now, but what’s there, other than the redbud, is purple and yellow irises on the left and three big hosta clumps.

Frankly, I’m indifferent about keeping the irises — they’re pretty, but they’re done blooming pretty quickly and then I just end up with bunches of green stalks. I’d rather have something that blooms throughout the summer. And we have plenty of hostas elsewhere in the backyard, so I’m not married to those either.

So, I now have two questions:

1. Should I plant some other things now, or just call it a day and wait to plant some other things in the spring? (Natorp’s is now closed for the season, but apparently you can still buy plants online and pick them up at the nursery, and other nurseries are still open.)

2. What should I plant? My options, based on the advice I’ve gotten so far, are:

• Endless summer hydrangeas

• Combination of bushes recommended by Natorp’s: Brilliantissima Red Chokeberry, Sugar Shack Buttonbush, Red Feather Arrowwood Viburnum

• Other perennials of my choice (must love shade and be deer-resistant; native plants that attract pollinators preferred)

• Something else?

I’d love more input on this, so let me know what you think in the comments!

Posted while listening to: I Can’t Stand the Rain (Tina Turner and Ann Peebles versions)