Many older Southern homes don’t use gutter systems to control rain water runoff. In many instances where the home sits on an incline the lack of gutters creates erosion in normally grassy areas and prevents grass from growing at all in other areas.
This particular project in North Carolina had major erosion from the roof runoff near the house which killed the grass that once grew and created soil separation at the drip line.
Installing a gutter system wasn’t up for consideration to control the erosion so the only other option was landscaping. If top soil ever existed in this location it had washed away many years ago leaving a bed of nothing but red clay which wasn’t able to hold grass and often washed away in heavy rains.
To the garden supply center we headed to get top soil, landscaping timber, landscaping staples and mulch to go along with the plants and landscaping fabric we already had.First task was to remove the existing grass and add a good amount of top soil to the area. We also added plastic edging around the edge. Once we did that and smoothed the soil out it was time for the landscaping fabric. Working from the bottom so the fabric would overlap from the bottom we added the landscaping fabric and staples to hold it in place.
We used a miter saw to cut the landscaping timber to the correct length and used smaller pieces of wood to secure ends where the timber wasn’t long enough. Then we added the landscaping timber across the area to ensure the mulch would stay in place during heavy rains and not wash away.
Then we determine placement of the plants, cut an “X” in each location and placed plants into the soil beneath the landscaping fabric.
Now it was time for the mulch which we placed over the entire area, around each plant insuring all cut areas and fabrics overlaps were covered to prevent any weed growth.
Finally we watered the area and our project was complete. The entire project took about 7 hours from going to pickup supplies to completion.
Plants grew in the coming weeks and months and those that flowered bloomed before the growing season ended.
Over the winter some plant foliage died back then reemerged the following spring.
