Do you find yourself dealing with pools of standing water in your yard after a heavy rain? If so, you’re certainly not alone. It’s a more common problem than you might think and a sure sign you’ve got a drainage issue. A well-designed landscape drainage system on your Gaithersburg MD property can fix the issue, but there’s a rather significant catch.

If you have other landscaping goals on your wish list, before you spend the money to have a landscape drainage system installed on your Gaithersburg MD property, it pays to step back and take a more strategic view. That’s best done by creating a master landscape design document.

We’ll talk more about that in just a moment, but first, we want to underscore the importance of proper drainage in general. It matters because even if the water is pooling at a safe distance from your home and any outbuildings on your property, it’s still a breeding ground for pests and it reduces the amount of yard space you have available for planting or entertaining.

If the water is pooling up close to your house or some other building, it can be a major problem because if left unchecked, that water will cause tremendous damage to the foundation of your home.

Now, back to that master landscape design document. The problem with rushing right out and having a landscape drainage system built on your Gaithersburg MD property is that if you have a long list of other improvements you’d like to make, then you might wind up installing the drainage system in such a way that it will interfere with those other projects.

A master landscape design document is a handy place where you can collect all the projects you want to undertake in one place but it’s much more than a simple laundry list of projects. It is that, of course, but it also allows you to:

• Spot big projects that would bust your budget and break them into smaller ones that are easier to manage, which allows you to make steady, consistent progress.
• Make an action list that allows you to order your landscaping goals in a way that makes sense, including spotting projects with dependencies and ordering them appropriately.
• Check all of your projects to ensure that when the last one is dropped into place, they will collectively create a pleasing aesthetic that sees all the elements hanging together to form a cohesive whole.

And of course, by having a clearly defined map of the various things you want to do, you’ll be able to design and build the landscape drainage system on your Gaithersburg MD property, taking all the other projects into account so you won’t have to rip anything out later to make room. That’s valuable. That’s important.

Here’s another question: Do you have steeply sloped areas anywhere on your property? If you do, a well-placed retaining wall could be an integral part of solving for your drainage issues. Most people are under the impression that all retaining walls are essentially the same, but they aren’t! In fact, there are a number of different varieties, including:

• Gravity Walls – These tend to be massive structures and the largest type of retaining wall you can build. Crafted with the heaviest and most durable materials, these walls rely on their sheer mass to hold the earth and water at bay. They are quite thick at their base, and a good bit thinner at the top.
• Cantilevered Walls – These are functionally similar to gravity walls, but they don’t require as much material to build and can be constructed with lighter materials. They maintain impressive strength, however, because they feature a concrete base that extends deep into the soil.
• Wooden Walls – Probably one of the most common retaining walls, these structures tend to be shorter and less expensive to build since they rely mostly on wooden planks. They usually have about 40% of their height beneath the surface and feature steel support beams placed a minimum of one foot apart, and are anchored into the soil itself for an added layer of support.
• Sheet Pile Walls – These are a great choice if you need to build a retaining wall in a confined area or to provide support for loose soils that shed water quickly. They’re typically made from wood plank or steel and about two thirds of their height exist beneath the surface.

So which type of wall is best for you? That depends on a number of factors and we won’t be able to give you a definitive answer until we’ve had an opportunity to come out to survey and assess your property. If you decide to work with us, that will be our first objective.

Once we’ve had a chance to survey the situation, we’ll be able to provide you with a professional recommendation, along with a free, no obligation estimate so you’ll have a clear picture of exactly what it will take to solve the drainage issues on your property once and for all.

If you need help putting that master landscape design document together, we’re happy to lend a hand with that too, and in fact, we may be able to help you stretch your landscaping budget farther than you realize by recommending lower-cost alternatives that accomplish the goals you have in mind without requiring as much outlay. If that sounds good to you, give our office a call today!