Due to recent remodeling we are relandscaping our front yard. We did a lot of work to control the drainage and I have a question about the area in front of the wall of our drive-thru carport. It is right in the middle of the front of our house.
The bed was overgrown with Monkey grass and slopes toward the wall. My DH put a plastic drain as you can see in the picture that connects to drains that go under the two driveways. We are trying to decide what to do with the bed and how to best "dress up" the drain. We thought about putting gravel on either side or maybe monkey grass. I need to either clean out the bed and replant some flowers etc.; or I have also debated just tidying it up, spreading out the monkey grass to fill the whole bed in and planting a flowering shrub I have (the name escapes me at the moment) in the middle.
This first picture is looking towards the wall from the yard. You can see how the bed slopes.
Landscaping help from Texas gardening friends
First photo
Second photo
This is a picture of the drain at the back of the bed in front of the wall.
Third photo:
Looking across the bed towards the yard from the corner by the wall
By the way if you're not from Texas and have any ideas please post them!!!!!:o)
Are you intending to leave the drain open and not covered by anything like in the picture?It seems it would quickly become filled with leaves,dirt etc if left open. What about topping the drain with some kind of perforated pipe then covering in landscape fabric, creating a French drain. Then you could put some pebbles or small river rocks on top and it would look like a dry stream bed. Line the area with some low plants and bigger rocks and it would do the job of draining but look nice.
That is sort of what I wanted to do. Put a perforated pipe over the drain and top with pebbles and rocks. My DH doesn't want to. He thinks it would be easier to keep clear if he leaves the drain open. Then he could clean it out. I guess he is afraid with a perforated pipe on top it would get stopped up.
The key is covering the pipe with a landscape fabric cloth that lets water through but keeps out the leaves,dirt etc. We've had our French drain for 4 years now and haven't had a problem with it. I will wager a bet that after a few times of trying to keep it clean, he'll be willing to try something else. How is he going to keep debris from flowing into the drains you have it connected to?
I guess he thinks it will just wash on out with the water flow.
Would you suggest putting the landscape fabric across the pipe and about a foot on either side, then covering pipe and all with the small decorative pebbles?
From what I understand the drain they built us had a sort of sleeve of the fabric all around the pipe..Then rocks on top of the setup.