Every time it rained heavily, Linda Faye Lucas of Maumee used to have two inches of standing water by her porch and in the driveway.

Then, in 2022, she turned a part of her front yard into a rain garden — a garden planted in a shallow man-made depression in the landscape.

This, she said, has solved the problem by catching the rain water and holding it while it percolates completely into the soil beneath. She also gained an aesthetically pleasant garden featuring at least 50 kinds of plants, many of which she uses for cooking.

On Tuesday, Ms. Faye Lucas hosted a tour of her garden “for the first time,” she noted smiling proudly.

“It’s nice to have people come and look at it,” the Toledo librarian said of her rain garden. “Lots of times, people don’t know what it’s going to look like. An

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