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RALEIGH -- Rain gardens in your yard can help prevent storm water runoff and pollution – two things that can be very hazardous for the environment.

"We can reduce pollution significantly," said Dr. Helen Kraus, a horticulturalist at N.C. State University. She believes rain gardens are one way to keep North Carolina's waterway's cleaner.

"When water falls on your home landscape, buildings, or streets, or roads, or parking lots… that picks up pollution and it runs across those hard surfaces and is collected by our storm drains," Kraus explained.

According to the Clean Water Education Partnership, polluted storm water runoff is the number one threat to the state's water quality. Up to 90 percent of pollutants found in run off water can be removed by a rain garden.

That fact prompted Kraus to write “Rain Gardening in the South.”

"A rain garden is a garden that's slightly depressed, so that it collects water, runs from the landscape to this garden,” she said. “It's allowed to slowly move down in the soil in that garden."

Kraus says a rain garden doesn't have to be large. She wrote her book so average homeowners can get the environmental benefits of having one at their house.

"It's really very easy; we built one in my own home landscape in a matter of two days," she said. Most only have to be 3-6 inches deep.

"I think small ones could be created for individual buildings or small parking lot or somewhere a lot of excess water would be," said Brian Jackson. He's an avid gardener living in Raleigh, considering planting a rain garden even in the small space near his condominium home.

"There's lots of buildings in our area, and when it rains, you have a lot of runoff from the building, the parking lots. I think rain gardens would probably offer an avenue for the rain to go," Jackson said.

That's good news to Kraus, who hopes more people will grow rain gardens to keep water cleaner.

"You're really adding to the benefit of the common good by having a rain garden," she said.

Kraus co-authored the book with NCSU Professor Anne Spafford.