Your lawn is likely the result of some very hard work on your part—aerating, seeding, fertilizing, and watering—and you should take the steps necessary to protect both its beauty and its health this season. That can include considering drainage options for your property, and assessing the need for further installation or repair. But how do drainage systems help to protect your lawn and the investment it represents? Below, we’ll explore some of the reasons adequate drainage is essential for lawn maintenance, and provide some resources to help you make the most of your time, money, and effort.
Too Much of a Good Thing
Lawns do require water, but give them too much water and the grass can’t thrive. If you want an even, consistent lawn, but have spots where water collects and does not drain well, you may want to consider conducting a bit of analysis. The types of soil upon which your property is built can have a huge impact on whether or not you need to install a drainage system, as well as what type of drainage may be required. Matrixes heavy in clay can often be responsible for poor drainage, but they aren’t the only culprits.
Water exits your property through a variety of ways. If you’re in an urban or suburban setting, this can mean storm drains along gutter networks. If these are clogged with debris from past storms, that can often prevent effective drainage of your lawn and lead to backups. According to Mid South Irrigation & Landscape, “The easiest way to “eyeball” whether this is a problem is to check for clutter at the apertures to storm drains and in street gutters adjacent to your property.”
Drainage systems installed on your property—whether they’re simple or complex—preclude excess water from standing on the surface and rotting the roots of the grass plants that make up your lawn. Standing water can happen in a variety of places—from desert to coastal properties—so think about how the weather behaves, how runoff is channeled away from your home in terms of gutters, and what sorts of exits exist for runoff, like street gutters or storm drains.
A Drainage System Can Even the Odds
If you have an uneven property—this can give lots of visual interest, but makes equalizing water needs and other aspects of lawn care difficult—a simple drainage system can sometimes help even things out. Which kind of system you choose will be up to you, but channeling excess water away from low areas where it accumulates and into storm drains can often help you grow a more evenly green lawn.
One novel way of constructing a drainage system, especially in urban areas that receive lots of precipitation and may have grade or slope issues, is to dedicate a portion of your yard to a rain garden. This can be done in an area where grass just doesn’t want to grow due to excess moisture. By constructing terraced areas of imported soils over gravel bases, you can check the headlong progress of runoff and actually grow grass at the base of a slope. That’s because you’ll choose plants that soak up that moisture all year round and decrease the amount that finds its way to the areas of lower elevation.
You don’t need to have an especially green thumb to cultivate this natural drainage system. Native plants or those that tolerate your climate well are often more resilient and perennial than the eye-catching annuals that require lots of tender loving care. Once you’ve installed these into their beds, they largely take care of themselves. This leaves you free to cultivate your lawn elsewhere. If a rain garden isn’t the answer, you may want to think about French drains or yard drains. French drains are pretty simple to install and maintain, and yard drains allow you to divert water to a dry well or into a nearby stream.
Drainage systems come in all types, but can often be just the thing you need to help you lawn thrive and keep it from being waterlogged. You can be as creative or utilitarian as your budget and landscape designing aspirations require—create slope terrace rain gardens, amend a clay rich soil with sand or gravel, install French drains—but get the water moving along away from the roots of your grass.
