It’s easy to begin planning a great many intentions for a garden space once you move into a new home, for obvious reasons. First, if this is the first or largest green space you’ve had ownership over, you want to make use of it. Gardening in itself is a joyful hobby (even if it does involve hard work and planning), so it’s no wonder you’d like to get started.
Yet without a great deal of experience, or without the true understanding of the garden you have, it’s easy to get carried away. To walk before you can run, so to speak. You may have plans to plant in soil that needs heavy treatment before you begin, or build upon areas that need to be formatted correctly before doing so.
In this post, then, we’ll discuss how to format a friendly garden you can work with before anything else, so you don’t learn about such difficulties the hard way later on.
With that in mind, please consider:
Landscaping & Runoff Design
Water has a great strength in finding every weak spot in your garden setup, which means if you don't think about where it's going to go before you start planting and building, you'll likely end up dealing with soggy patches, eroded soil, or worse, water creeping toward your house foundation.
You'll need to take a good look at how your garden slopes and where water will begin to collect after heavy rain. This lets you understand flow patters and begin mitigating them as needed. For example, that might include gravel drainage systems or French drains, which can redirect water away from areas where you don't want it hanging around, and they're not as complicated as they sound.
Structural Bases & Foundations
You might have a good spot chosen for a greenhouse or started planning where your shed bases will go, but the ground underneath needs to be properly prepared for real success. Most people skip this step because it feels boring compared to the fun parts of garden planning, but a wobbly foundation is obviously going to cause issues.
You need to level the ground, which may mean excavating a few inches and adding a layer of crushed stone or sand, and actually use a proper level to make sure everything sits right. Concrete pads work well if you’re going to be building a larger structure too.
The soil type matters as well, because clay expands and contracts with moisture, while sandy soil drains well but can shift. As such, understanding what you're building on helps you choose the right foundation approach for whatever you're planning to install. You can always call in a landscaper to help you.
Foundation Repair Or Wall Protections
Sometimes you have to force the land to behave, as retaining walls that are leaning or showing cracks could fail completely once you start changing drainage patterns or adding weight above them.
Check for signs that foundations are settling unevenly, like cracks in concrete or gaps where structures meet the ground, because these issues should be expected to get worse over time, especially once you start changing how water moves through your garden space.
So, for instance, you may need to waterproof basement walls that will be near new planting areas, or add proper drainage behind retaining walls to prevent a buildup of pressure. It’s very much worth the investment to do this.
With this advice, we hope you can more easily format a friendly garden you can work with, all for the betterment of your future designs.
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