When the rains blew in, marking the beginning of fall, we realized something - we had a horrible drainage issue! Water would puddle all around the foundation of the farmhouse and make walking paths impossible to use. Everything would flood and we were left with muddy slop. We were wondering why the front yard by the house had no grass!
Our Muddy Front Yard
We wanted to fix this issue as soon as possible to prevent damage to the foundation and front yard. We also thought it would be nice to be able to walk the dog without muddy paw prints across the house afterwards! Yet, we had not planned or budgeted for this project. So we came up with an inexpensive and stylish fix - a Dry Creek Bed!
Dry creek beds are fairly easy to make and a great inexpensive option for perting water to other areas of your property. Lucky for us, our yard has a natural slope that leads to the top of a large hill. But over the years, brush and overgrown plants had blocked water and caused landscape build ups around the house.
Our video below walks through all the steps we took to fix our drainage issue. Total we spent about $300 in material - mulch, landscape edging, plants, landscape rock, and landscape netting. We used natural stone from around the property as our stepping stone path, and were able to re-purpose native plants and rocks for much of our landscape.
After we dug and lined the creek bed, we set our landscape edging
We tried to edge by following natural lines in nature near the house. We wanted the landscape to look natural and to feel Zen. We avoided hard corners and sharp edges and instead chose large semi-circles and winding patterns.
After Edging, we placed netting and began spreading mulch
We also had some locals come visit to check it out!
The video below shows the full process and some sweet before and afters!
