The grass is now officially growing. It's exciting to see it green up. It took 6 days for the sprouts to appear, which I think is pretty good. We were VERY nervous, as Saturday we had a huge downpour that made it appear our entire yard was flowing down towards the Mississippi.

In our neighborhood, everything flows towards the Mississippi River, about 3 blocks away. With the poorly draining clay soil and grass not yet established, we've been really able to see exactly how the yard handles water. The regrading we did greatly improved the water situation around the house. The sump pump was very active prior to re-grading (so much that we joked about having a water fall feature from the sump outlet)- but it hasn't gone on once since the grading. This weekend, we were able to get the 60 plants planted in the rain gardens.
We used a combination of grasses- such as Karl Forester and perennials such as Black-Eyed Susans and Coneflowers. I had to improvise a bit, as not all the plants I wanted were available at Gertens- but overall, I think it will look great once it gets a bit more established.
Here's a list of the plants we used:
Karl Forester- grass
Blue Sedge grass
Prairie Dropsee Grass (edible & nutritious seeds on this one!)
Icicle Veronica
Butterfly Weed
Pixie Meadowbrite Coneflower
Little Joe Pye Weed
Magnus Coneflower