This study is focused on principles of rain gardens in landscape architecture and their application in Slovak conditions. Rain gardens can be seen as a part of sustainable design and application of ecological principles in changing natural conditions. The simplicity of a rain garden represents combination of rainwater management and flower planting, which is a strong landscaping element because of the connection between ecology and aesthetics. Plants used in rain gardens help to keep water by the root system and, after that, to transpire it. Another importance of this kind of arrangement is its simplicity and positive impact on creation of a new bio-retentive ecosystem, which is able to safely collect, absorb, filtrate and carry off rain water from paved areas. Many foreign countries have understood their importance and have already implemented them in new projects of public and private spaces. This paper also describes a theoretical planting proposal of a rain garden in a housing estate in the city of Nitra to demonstrate a real application of this technique in Slovak conditions.

Rain gardens represent a method of storm water treatment at settlement level, where, besides the ecological aspect, they fulfil the aesthetic function in public spaces. Their concept and proposal follows several rules under the natural conditions and site parameters itself. The aim of study was the establishment of methodology for determining the possible locations for the installation of the rain gardens, in application to chosen settlement-village Žirany, Nitra district. Selection of potential sites is based on the attributes of soil properties, slope, land use, ownership and ground water level in the given area, that are processed in GIS software QGIS. The elaboration of the methodology is based on existing analyses in last years. The result of applied methodology is raster map which describes the suitability of sites for rain garden installation in selected village based on the spatial analysis with the use of overlaying of the value raster of the mentioned attributes. Area of fields with best conditions for raingarden placement is approx. 9700 m 2 (0.86% of cadastral area of surveyed village Žirany).