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Ligaya Garden
a little garden near Gawler
Soakage pits
Soakage pits capture water and allow it to infiltrate into the soil. They are similar to rain gardens but aren’t planted into.
Soakage pits are a great way to use rain water that comes from gutters that are too low to plumb into a rain tank or to use the overflow from the tanks themselves.
At Ligaya Garden we have experimented with several small pits and will be scaling them up once Autumn (2020) comes our way… there’s a lot of digging to do and we don’t want to be doing it in the heat!
Our soakage pits are going to be built under the main path in te front working area. As folks will be walking over them, they will have rocks in them making a decorative feature.
Soakage pits don’t have to be lined but we found that a permeable liner such as Geotextile fabric slows the flow of water into the soil and prevents soil from gettig into the space between the rocks.
The planned size for the path pit is 800 mm x 300 mm x 600 mm deep. The front pit will be 900 mm x 900 mm x 600 mm.
The water for our soakage pits will come from rainwater tank overflow directed by lengths of pipe that an be removed and stored when not in use.
If you’re short on space, you can make mini pits from plastic buckets with holes drilled around their sides and bottom. Don’t make the holes too big, 3 mm to 5 mm should be enough. The water should leak slowly into the soil around the buckets.
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Ligaya Garden 