Our Rain Garden Works With Little Effort On My Part

Outflow Into Rain Garden -
Not The Most Lovely
View Of It, But Notice
How Smoothly It Works!

Every morning I take a circuit of the yard just to check things out. There's always something a little different; even in the winter, the wind moves things around.
Now that spring is coming, plants are budding - and I didn't have to put any effort into that; they did it on their own!  The rain is also coming; it seems that more days than not, our rain garden is at work, slowing the movement of stormwater into the system by storing and releasing. Best of all - this takes no work by me! I see it operating, at its slow pace, and enjoy not just the flowers and berries, but also the sight of a smoothly-working machine. It's not a purely mechanical machine; it combines pipes and valves with dirt and plants. The end result is very pleasing ... AND very little work on my part, now that its building is done.
Following construction, I've done the following:

• Cleaned the flow restrictor (maybe 2 minutes of work to wash out a year's worth of gunk)
• Closed a valve
• Opened a valve
• Weeded a little.

That's it. That's all. And I suspect that if I hadn't bothered to weed, the system would keep on working; I just would have a different selection of plants growing. Since the garden displaces a lot of grass that I would otherwise have had to mow, the net result is less work for me yay!
So far, concerns that a rain garden would take a lot of upkeep have not come to pass in this case. I had some concern about water coming out of the pipe compacting the soil but "armoring" the outflow with a pile of rocks (which were reclaimed from earlier gardening efforts) took care of that - see photo. I would recommend something similar for any home that has rain, a yard and a roof!