Pros offer tips on achieving proper lawn drainage

by Dan Holland

With spring showers often leaving standing water in residential yards, a few tips from landscaping pros can help homeowners achieve and maintain proper drainage.

“Drainage is a real simple thing. It’s plants, mulch, regrading, stone work and drain tile,” explained Mark Baytos of Ohio State Landscaping in Richfield. “That covers all five bases of it.”

Regrading a yard, combined with the installation of drain tile, can help redirect and drain water from low-lying areas, said Baytos. 

“There can be a lot of movement in the ground from year-to-year, which often has a lot to do with tree roots coming up,” he explained. “Regrading is a nice and inexpensive way of addressing that.”

Sal Manera, of Sal’s Landscaping in Brecksville, agreed on the importance of regrading, adding that drain tile can be a remedy when positive flow is not achievable due to terrain challenges.

“If you don’t have the grade, with the water draining away from the house and having a proper slope to it, that’s when you need to install drain tile,” said Manera. “Once you’ve installed lawn drain tile, then you apply soil on top of all the disturbed areas to a proper finished grade to make sure water is flowing in the proper direction into the lawn drain and away from the house.”

Manera added that equipment can be rented to install drain tile, but a professional is often called in. 

“It can be a big job to do by yourself,” he explained. “With drain tile, you have to trench out the line, gravel it at the base, pipe and gravel on the top, and you create a water vane. As soon as the water hits that pipe, it goes right to the source you’re directing it to.”

For low spots, Baytos and Manera both recommend filling in depressions with river stone and then covering over with topsoil before seeding.

“The ground will stay firm right there, and then the water will drain through the rocks,” said Baytos. “If you fill in a depression with dirt, it will just turn into mud. That’s actually how all golf courses are done. After they grade a golf course, they stone the property down and then soil it on top. It only requires an inch of dirt for the grass to grow.”

“A lot of times, putting stone down keeps the ground firm and level,” added Manera. “Stones aren’t absorbent, and that’s key. The water may not go anywhere, but the ground will remain firm.”

Mulch can aid in controlling water ponding around trees and home foundations, according to Baytos. 

“In those depressed areas, especially around trees, mulch becomes like a sponge; it will soak up a lot of the water,” he explained. “In an instance where the roots of a tree are exposed, and the ground has been raised up because of a tree, you can put mulch around that and then fix up the area around the outside perimeter of the tree ring. Bringing up flowerbeds with mulch is a practical way of keeping water away from a home.”He also said planting certain trees, such as willows, can help absorb excess water.