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Sunready Landscaping

Yard Drainage- Avoiding Turning Your Backyard Into A Swamp

The humid, hot weather of August is upon us. The sun beams down on all of us, scorching and bathing the residents of this side of the world in heavy heat. All across North America, from Stouffville, Ontario to Victoria, British Columbia, people are feeling the power that comes at the end of summer.

However, with the humid days come others where rain falls in droves. And yes, for gardeners, landscapers and homeowners everywhere sometimes rain can be a good thing. In fact, for most and their plants, it can be a great thing. However, for some, heavy rain and great bouts of water can be devastating.

These people are those who don’t have a yard that drains properly.

They are the ones with wet backyards. The ones whose property resembles the Everglades. They are riddled with mosquitos, soaking socks, and ground on which one cannot walk. They are an unfortunate few, and until they can find someone to turn their yard around, they deserve our pity.

But how can one stop from becoming one of these people? How can the gardeners, homeowners, and landscapers of the world avoid this dreadful fate? Three words- proper yard drainage.

This article will be all about the above- proper yard drainage. It will cover the whys and the how’s mostly, but perhaps there will even be some other questions answered in the recesses of this collection of words. No need to keep on dancing around the subject, there is now only time to begin.

Why should one care about yard drainage?

Yard drainage. The very sound of those two words together brings yawns to the jaws of the average homeowner or gardener. The only people who find yard drainage exciting are landscapers, and they tend to be some pretty weird people. They are landscapers after all.

However, as boring as it may sound, yard drainage is incredibly important. Not just incredibly important, but seriously important. And serious things tend to be boring but they also tend to be important.

But why is yard drainage so important? Why should the average homeowner or landscaper or even the average gardener care about this boring aspect of landscaping?

The key word here is erosion. Or rather, erosion is the key reason as to why the average person should care about yard drainage. With the rain and water comes the erosion of the soil, which can literally move around a yard. Not only this, but erosion, once it has moved the yard around, can make it so that water has an easy time getting in or around a homeowner’s… well, home. Water in the home usually means water damage, which means some nasty (and more importantly, expensive) repairs.

Even without erosion, there are a litany of things that can go wrong without proper yard drainage. For starters, that aforementioned “Everglades” comment was no joke. Without proper yard drainage, the average person’s yard could end up looking like a swamp. Deep puddles of water, pooling up and drowning the plants that the homeowner has worked so hard to grow. While water usually means life, too much of it could spell the opposite for the plants in the garden.

And then, there are nature’s most annoying pests- mosquitoes. They breed amongst standing water, and having improper yard drainage means that the average homeowner is going to have a lot of that around. The math here is simple- a lot of standing water means a lot of mosquitoes breeding, which means a lot of bad times in the backyard.

So, why is yard drainage important? To avoid killing off the gardener’s plants, to avoid doing expensive damage to the homeowner’s home and finally, the avoid those pesky flying pests that cause more deaths to humans each year than almost any other animal.

How to make sure the yard has proper drainage.

This is the part of the article that most people are going to be interested in– and there is good news. If one does not see water pooling in their backyard, then there’s a very good chance that it has proper drainage. And thus, they need not worry.

However, the appearance of water pooling is a great indicator of improper yard drainage, and should not be taken lightly. The best course of action would be to contact a local landscaping company, as the work to get a yard draining properly can be time consuming and difficult, and is best left to professionals. However, if one chooses to not go with the pros, there are some options.

Adding Plant Materials. Adding a bunch of new plants (especially ones that are good in both wet and dry conditions) could mean that a yard drains a little better. Also, the addition of these plants might make the backyard a little more attractive. However, more plants could just mean more things for the extra water to kill, and could also be next to impossible with all the water pooling in the yard at the time.

The drain pipe. Also known as a french drain, adding one of these is great for reducing the amount of pooling in a backyard. However, it involves digging up a trench, adding a bunch of filter fabric and gravel bedding, then filling it back up with topsoil and gravel. It can tend to be a pain and once again, is best left to professionals.

And so, this article about the importance of yard drainage in one’s backyard (or any yard, for that matter) has come to an end. Hopefully, all the homeowners, gardeners, and landscapers that took the time to read this article have learned a thing or two about yard drainage. Perhaps they learned why yard drainage was so important– in order to avoid expenses and pests. Perhaps they learned how to ensure one’s property has proper yard drainage. However, the takeaway should be this– if one does not take yard drainage seriously, they may have to pay a serious price.

The Sunready Landscaping team is ready to help you create extraordinary outcomes. Proudly serving the Greater Toronto Area from our home base in Stouffville since 2016.

Contact Sunready Landscaping for your free quote today. Call us at: 647-779-5798 or send us an inquiry via our contact form.

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