Think about all the water you use each season for watering your garden and lawn, and perhaps to wash your vehicle or do other outdoor work.

Now think about all the water that runs off the roof of your home and into the eavestroughs and downspouts when it rains. Where does that water then go?

If the water just keeps running off your property, it’s kind of like pouring some of your hard-earned money down the drain, and it’s not helping the environment.

As the rain runs off into the sidewalks, roads and so on, it can pick up debris, oil and other pollutants that end up in our waterways.

But if you use a rain barrel to capture and store water that you’ll want later for your garden and lawn, it can help reduce your water bill and help reduce water pollution.

It also can be less taxing on our communities’ infrastructure if we’re saving water as opposed to drawing from public water resources, says Will Hill, a community food programmer with the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax. In his work, rain barrels are used in backyard and community gardens as a way to reduce gardeners’ reliance on public water systems.

These days rain barrels are more likely to be high-grade plastic than wooden. You can get ready-made rain barrels at some home or garden supply stores, or find other suitable containers to use as rain barrels.

“Often we will repurpose plastic vessels that have been used for industrial food goods,” says Hill. “You want to make sure any vessel you are using is food grade and isn’t a lower quality plastic that leaches any sort of toxins into the water. We provide some resources on the Halifax Garden Network — www.halifaxgardennetwork.com — about where materials can be found.”

To collect water properly, you don’t just leave the rain barrel out in your yard — it would fill really slowly or perhaps not at all. You need to be diverting water from a surface area — a roof or eavestrough coming off a roof — and usually the barrel goes under a downspout. You also want to elevate your rain barrel to help with the flow of water.

“At some of our community gardens we use pallets, which can be obtained for free from a lumber yard, and you pile those two or three high, just to get the barrel high enough off the ground that you can fit a watering can underneath, but you also can attach a hose to the spigot,” says Hill.

If you want to install a rain barrel on your property, keep in mind that the barrels fill really quickly and need to be emptied out before the next rainstorm, so they are great for people who are actively gardening. But if there isn’t a lot of gardening activity on a property, you have to think about releasing that water between the rains, and some people might have more success with several rain barrels in a sort of overflow design scenario, says Emily LeGrand, restoration educator for the Ecology Action Centre.

Some homeowners may decide to put another catchment area on their property, such as a dug-down garden, often called a rain garden, which can receive overflow from the rain barrel.

“You want to put really robust native plants in the rain garden,” says LeGrand. “They could be shrubs, they could be perennials that are really great for pollinators, or whatever a person’s preference is. But it needs to be a species that can handle being dry and also being wet for a couple of days. On our blog, at www.stormwatercentral.ca, there are a lot of guidelines about rain garden placement and design.”

She also suggests checking other reliable sources online for how-to tips and diagrams, such as Nova Scotia Environment’s rain barrel guide at www.novascotia.ca/nse/water/docs/droponwaterfaq_rainbarrels.pdf, and The

Vermont Rain Garden Manual at www.uvm.edu/seagrant/sites/uvm.edu.seagrant/files/vtraingardenmanual.pdf.

If you have a backyard vegetable garden, you could make great use of your rain barrel as a water source and then have overflow rainwater that you are not using go into a rain garden that is planted for pollinators, which supports your vegetable gardening as well.

You also can use water from your rain barrel for washing your car or anything that you would use non-potable water for in your home. It’s just important to consider that the water will have whatever is on your roof, and keep in mind that you wouldn’t want to drink it, says LeGrand.

You can leave your barrel out to collect water for fall gardening and lawn care, but you want to be sure to empty it before a freeze to avoid cracking in the barrel or spigot. If you have the space, it would be ideal to store your barrel out of the elements, perhaps in a shed or garage. Then you can bring it out again in the spring to start capturing the water on all those rainy days.