Having never owned a house or really had a yard of my own, I got pretty excited and decided to do some ad-hoc landscaping. Built some raised beds for vegetables, and just laying in some organic shaped in-ground beds for low water decorative plants. Gonna fill the rest in with gravel. Any pointers?
I wouldn't direct water from the roof into your garden if it's a food garden - flower beds it's fine. You're going to get a bunch of flecks of shingle in runoff water ---> plastics and hydrocarbons ----> contamination of your food. The only time I would collect like this would be from a metal roof.