Does your backyard fill up with water every time it rains? Then you probably have a drainage problem.
If you have a yard drainage problem, you’ve no doubt noticed the following problems:
- You have more mosquitoes in your yard
- Lawn grass doesn’t grow well in the area where ponding occurs
- Water-loving weeds, such as nutsedge, grow in abundance in that wet area
- You’ve noticed your property’s ponding getting worse every year
- You may have flooding in your basement because of poor yard drainage.
How to Fix Poor Yard Drainage
If those issues sound familiar, it’s time to find out how you can fix water drainage problems in your yard. Fortunately, there are many options for correcting a ponding yard. If you’re a DIY’er, you can fix your yard drainage problem with these seven ideas:
- Clean out your gutters every spring and fall. If it’s been a while since you checked your gutters, now is a good time.
Clogged gutters come from twigs, leaves, and debris forming a dam causing water to back up. You may notice a flood pouring from your blocked rainspouts.
- Add a French drain so water can drain away from your home or from the low-lying area of your property.
You’ll need to dig trenches and put in piping to move the water toward the French drain. You can learn more about French drains in this video.
Watch how well a Brinly lawn sweeper with dethatcher cleans up your property.
- Extend your water downspouts, so water goes to a rain garden, into a catchment basin or into a garden area for extra moisture.
- Improve your landscaping as well as repair your drainage problem by creating a rain garden. If your extended rain spouts go out to a rain garden, you can include these water-loving plants:
- Sedges (Carex)
- Bluestar (Amsonia)
- Turtlehead (Chelone).
- Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis)
- Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida)
- Swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnate)
- Swamp mallow (Hisbiscus moscheutos)
- Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium)
Expect to see all kinds of wildlife visiting your rain garden, from butterflies and dragonflies to hummingbirds and ducks!
Read this blog post to see why you need a lawn sweeper for your fall yard clean-up jobs.
- Build a dry creek bed into your landscaping. If you want to move water away from your home and low-lying yard, you can add a dry creek bed to your landscape design.
Again, you can add native plants including flowers, trees, and shrubs as well as native rock and stone to your creek bed. You want to place native stones and rocks to show movement in your creek bed when there is no water in it.
You’ll need water-loving plants that won’t die when they get a deluge of water. The same plants in number four work perfectly for a dry riverbed. You can also add the following:
- Ferns (Filicophyta) that come in many varieties to add softness
- Hostas (Funkia) of all shapes and sizes
- Ornamental ivies (Araliaceous) and other ground covers
- Various small trees and shrubs.
- Install a catch basin. A catch basin is larger than a French drain. It has a 6” drain, and the basin sits right underneath the soil line. You can position your extended rainspouts to head toward the catch basin to disperse excess water.
- Build a swale. A swale sits either in-between two sloped areas or at the bottom of a slope on your property.
You can build a concrete swale or water-tolerant lawn grass at the bottom of the hill. Swales collect extra water and slowly drain it into the ground or into a French drain.
Tools to Help You Get Rid of a Swampy Yard
At Brinly-Hardy, we build lawn care and garden attachments that make your job as a property owner easy. Our products are made to last and help you get the job done quickly.
For installing trenches and other ways to channel excess water from your yard, we recommend the following lawn care attachments:
- Our tow-behind carts to carry shovels, piping, rocks, plants, and any other material to your worksite.
- If you’re having grading work done, our lawn rollers can smooth out the soil after it’s graded.
- For your other lawn care and landscape jobs, visit our website to purchase a lawn care or garden attachment for all of your outdoor projects.
You’ll find our Brinly products at these fine retailers. If you have any questions about our products, contact customer service at 877-728-8224 or fill out our contact form.
Additional Sources:
FamilyHandyman.com, “How to Achieve Better Yard Drainage.”
WetLawn.com, “4 Steps for Dealing with a Swampy Backyard.”
