After doing some excavation in our backyard we cast a bag of Silver Falls upland savanna seed mix on the now disturbed soil. We live in Eugene, Oregon and our backyard has a stand of native Oregon white oaks so this seed mix made sense. We didn't do much to help it along (no signiicant irrigation, etc). It came in great and we we really enjoyed all of the wild flowers.
We now plan to replace a large amount of our front yard with this seed mix.
I'm posting a few photos and a brief description of the rain collection system I installed last year, in case anyone is interested in doing something similar. In the summer we use the water to irrigate part of our native plant garden using an ultra low pressure drip system. In the fal/winter/spring we fill the tank using rainwater and any extra water beyond what the tank can hold overflows the tank and increases soil moisture.
We installed a 2500 gallon water tank (the large black barrel in the photos) at the highest point in our yard and a 50 gallon rain barrel (the small red barrel in the photos) at one of our downspouts.
We collect water in the red rain barrel temporarily and then pump the water uphill to the water tank using a pump that's installed inside the barrel. The pump is a submersible sump pump that automatically turns on and off based on water level. We also installed an overflow on the rain barrel into our storm water system in case the pump fails or a heavy rain event outpaces the pump.
We connected the pump to the water storage tank via a buried water line that runs probably 30 - 50 feet.
The system has been really reliable and has provided us with a great source of water for our plants in the summer.
And in case anyone is wondering this system is fully legal where I live, the pump is plugged into a GFCI circuit and our roof is metal.