Part III—From Flooded to Fantastic!

By Linda Mills, JRA River Hero Home

If you’ve been following the saga (see August 26 and September 16) of how our runoff-laden yard was transformed last summer from homely to healthy, here is the final installment. Because of grant money distributed and monitored by the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, we welcomed three fabulous projects into our landscape. The wonderful guys from Greener Landscapes (paul@greenerlandscapes.com, 804-432-3623) worked with us to produce a rain garden, a BayScape and a patio of permeable pavers.

Backyard flood plain.

The area in the photo below was the “flood plain” behind our house. The gate (left side of photo) exits to the alley. When it would rain hard, water would pour off the several pitches of our roof, overflow the rain barrels (yes, two rain barrels), and wash through this area as it rushed toward the alley. Once in the alley (that actually has ruts from the flowing water), the runoff flowed into the street, consequently making its way to Reedy Creek a block away.       

To fix this substantial runoff issue, the contractors dug down about 14 to16 inches with a backhoe. (They also dug out the rain garden while the backhoe was there.) The ground was hard clay. You can see from the photo below, that after several heavy rains, the water did not drain. At all! (Remember how it just kept raining early in the summer?) We christened this area “The Pit.” Because this was the last project to be completed, this lovely muddy mess sat for several weeks. We thought about stocking it with fish. A friend recommended buying a canoe so we could take out the trash.

The Pit

But eventually, the rains stopped and it was time to focus on The Pit. The first step was to dump a load of large-gauge rocks in the bottom. The second load of rocks was a bit smaller gauge. The third load was an even smaller gauge, like medium gravel. It exhausted me just to watch the Greener Landscape guys move those rocks. Talk about aerobic exercise!

Once the gravel was in place, the really exciting stuff began. For the pavers, we chose tumbled bluestone. We wanted a natural feel instead of a more precise brick look. The stones the fellows chose were beautiful. We purchased about ½ ton of extra stone, not included in the grant money, so that we could extend the path slightly. (A half ton sounds like a lot, but it was only about six rocks!)

Paul, the rock expert on the team, artistically placed each piece of tumbled bluestone in the precise best spot, taking into account both the look of the pattern and the practically of the design. Paul leveraged and leveled the stones into the smaller gravel with enough space between them (about two inches) to allow water to drain into the gravel. He is an artist and an engineer!

According to Jacob Bauckman at Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, designing the patio with larger spaces between the stones was the best solution for our particular problem. If we had used bricks or pavers with narrower gaps between them, we might have still had runoff, especially as the gaps “filled in” after a few years. There were no new plantings in the area, but we did weed, trim and mulch. We are overwhelmed with how beautifully it turned out. And when it pours? No water runs off the property. Win, win!

         

Fabulous and functional!

But what happened to all that extra dirt that was dug from the rain garden and The Pit?  There was a lot of dirt to deal with. But the Greener Landscapes fellows had done this before. They took the dirt from the two excavated areas and used it to construct the berms for the BayScape. It was the perfect solution—there was no dirt dumped into the landfill and it gave us this lovely flowing berm around the outside of our fence. The BayScape was planted with our choice of interesting and colorful native plants, including sweet bay magnolia and service berry. Other perennials included bee balm, rudbeckia, wild geranium, giant purple hyssop and Virginia sweetspire. We also are looking forward to fresh blueberries next summer from our own native bushes—if we can beat the native birds and squirrels to them.

BayScape berm (foreground and background)
as the plants were going in

Now that all three of our projects are complete—a rain garden, a BayScape and a patio of permeable pavers, we are thrilled with the results. Our runoff has decreased substantially, if not totally.  We’re glad to know that we are earning our River Hero Home status more than ever by not contributing runoff to Reedy Creek, and therefore the James River. As we tend our new rain garden and BayScape, and anticipate the gorgeous blooms of next spring and summer, we are also gratified that native plants and wildlife call our yard home.