Architect Selma Goker Wilson gets giddy every time it pours at her Sarasota home. She watches with excitement as her labor of love — a rain garden she and her husband built themselves — is doing an effective job at diverting the heavy flow of water coming off their roof into a downspout and onto flowers and plants.

“Working on it was very therapeutic, learning about all the plants, but seeing the water come out, we come out every time it rains, like ooh, how's it doing?” said Goker Wilson.

She and husband Christopher Wilson, an architecture historian at Ringling College, find joy in adjusting stones and moving plants to increase the amount of stormwater that filters down into their yards instead of flowing onto their concrete street out front. They say it’s about being good stewards to t

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