Drainage and erosion control in Olney MD can be a significant challenge, depending on your property. Challenges, however, were meant to be overcome, and we can help with that! Whatever your landscaping goals are, proper drainage and erosion control are the logical things to begin with. Everything else stems from and can be planned around those twin pillars.
Even if you have fairly modest landscaping ambitions, the first, best thing you can do is to create a Master Landscape Design Document. That sounds more complicated than it is. In truth, it’s just an organized list of all the landscaping you want to do on your property.
The beautiful part about creating such a document though, is the fact that it allows you to sort, organize, prioritize, and break big projects into smaller, more manageable chunks that won’t wreck your budget when you try to tackle them.
Of course, at or near the top of your list should be any and everything you want to do in the areas of drainage and erosion control on your Olney MD property. If you’re scratching your head wondering how, precisely you go about doing those things, here are a few of the more common strategies we typically employ:
Plant Grasses And Shrubs – This is the first and simplest thing you can do to control erosion. Grasses and shrubs create a dense network of roots that help keep your soil where it is, which neatly solves your erosion problem.
Create A Diversion – This is another simple, cost-effective strategy that can be employed. In their simplest forms, diversions are nothing more than open ditches that control the flow of water. Since water collects at the lowest point, it will naturally gravitate to your diversionary ditch, and then flow downhill to wherever you’d like to put it.
There are a number of options where this is concerned, ranging from depositing it into a drainage ditch where it will flow to away from your property, a dry well, or even a decorative pond.
Terraces For Steep Slopes – Unfortunately, grasses and shrubs will only get you so far. Drainage and erosion control on your Olney MD property can be significantly more difficult if you’re dealing with steep slopes, which are all too common. In that case, creating a system of terraces is your best bet.
Once the terraces are in place, you can plant foliage as appropriate to help keep the soil where you want it.
Terraces require the construction of retaining walls and that’s going to mean building out a proper drainage system, usually in the form of a French drain. This is more elaborate and expensive than the other two solutions we mentioned but the end result is beautiful, and opens up a world of possibilities.
However you’d like to proceed, it starts with a phone call to our office. Give us a call today.
