Romania’s Urban Water Challenge: Can a Small Rain Garden Make a Difference?

In Bucharest, one of Romania’s largest and fastest-growing urban areas, these weather extremes are becoming increasingly challenging. Heavy rainfall can quickly overwhelm drainage systems, with streets turning into rivers within minutes, traffic disruptions and large amounts of rainwater flowing away before it can be absorbed by the ground.

But in the centre of Bucharest, in Tineretului Park, a small experiment is showing how cities can respond differently to changing weather patterns: by working with water rather than simply trying to remove it.

A garden designed to capture rain

Earlier this year, the Bucharest Natural Park Association (APNB) installed the first rain garden in a public park in Bucharest, on a hill in Tineretului Park.

The location was carefully chosen. During heavy rainfall, water previously flowed down the slope, carrying soil onto the pavement and eventually into the city’s drainage system. The rain garden was designed to slow this flow, retain water and allow it to gradually return to the soil.

Unlike a conventional flower bed, a rain garden functions as a small-scale water management system. Through landscape design, drainage structures and carefully selected vegetation, it captures, filters and temporarily stores rainwater.

The plants used in the garden are adapted to changing conditions, able to tolerate both periods of excess water after heavy rainfall and drier periods during summer. This allows the space to contribute not only to water management but also to urban biodiversity.

The project was soon put to the test.

During the heavy rainfall of June and July, including storms that brought more than 80 litres of rain per square metre, the rain garden successfully retained water that previously flowed down the surrounding slopes and across the pavement before entering the drainage network. According to APNB, the vegetation and underground drainage system helped keep much of the water within the green area instead of allowing it to become surface runoff.

Rethinking rainwater

For decades, cities have largely been designed to move rainwater away as quickly as possible.

As buildings, roads and pavements replace natural ground, less water can infiltrate into the soil. Instead, large volumes of runoff reach drainage systems almost simultaneously, increasing the risk of local flooding during intense storms.

Rain gardens take a different approach.

Rather than treating rainfall as a problem to be removed, they treat it as a resource that can be temporarily stored, filtered and gradually returned to the soil.

The concept may seem modest, but when combined with other green infrastructure solutions such as permeable pavements, bioswales, tree pits and green roofs ,it can help cities better cope with increasingly intense rainfall.

Beyond water management, these solutions can also improve urban environments by supporting biodiversity, reducing heat and creating greener public spaces.

A changing climate, a changing city

Climate projections indicate that extreme weather events are likely to become more frequent, with warmer and drier periods increasingly interrupted by intense rainfall.

This creates a dual challenge for cities such as Bucharest: managing water scarcity during dry periods while also preventing flooding when large amounts of rain arrive within a short time.

Traditional drainage infrastructure remains essential, but it cannot always accommodate sudden peaks in rainfall, particularly in densely built neighbourhoods where green spaces are limited.

Nature-based solutions provide an additional layer of resilience by allowing water to remain where it falls for longer, reducing pressure on drainage systems while improving the ability of urban areas to adapt to climate change.

Small interventions, wider impact

The rain garden in Tineretului Park is only one project, but it demonstrates how relatively small interventions can contribute to making cities more resilient.

The Bucharest Natural Park Association (APNB), together with local partners, is encouraging similar nature-based solutions in other green spaces across the capital. The organisation is also involved in broader initiatives to strengthen blue-green infrastructure in Bucharest, including the Blue-Green Corridor initiative along the city’s rivers, previously featured on Agroberichten Buitenland.

These initiatives reflect a wider shift in urban planning: moving away from the idea that rainwater should simply be removed as quickly as possible and towards creating spaces that can capture, absorb and reuse water.

As climate extremes become more common, adapting cities will require more than larger pipes and bigger drainage systems. It will also mean creating landscapes that work with natural processes.

Sometimes, resilience begins with something as simple as a garden.

More information

For more information, you can reach out to the Netherlands Agricultural Network in Romania via: bkr-lvvn@minbuza.nl