Garden Beds on DG

Berkeley, CA

I built and installed two very large garden beds to be placed atop a new decomposed granite surface that was installed by a landscaper. The beds look great, but the water draining from the beds is being absorbed by the surrounding DG, making it look ugly. The DG holds onto the water for a very long time and is actually starting to mold in parts of the surface that don't get a ton of sun.

We are now underwatering our plants in the garden bed to limit the seepage into the DG, but that doesn't seem to help--we can go three or four days without watering the garden beds and the problem remains. Anyone have ideas for what we can do to fix the problem? Add more DG to create a deeper surface? Right now, the DG is about 1-2 inches thick and it sits direct on top of fairly compact soil (no weed barrier).

Thumbnail by beerspeaks
Yankton, SD

I would talk to your landscaper, that seems like a design flaw and if you wanted the DG they should have informed you that the beds would leak quite a lot onto the surrounding area. Are the beds partially in the ground? I think they are supposed to be. I am not an expert but have been reading a bit on these beds.

Berkeley, CA

We had a disastrous experience with this landscaper and it's not worth the frustration to begin talking to them again, so I'm hoping to fix this myself--they did not have the knowledge to prevent this from happening in the first place, anyway! This design was theirs.


The beds are in contact with the compacted soil base, so they are effectively 1-2 inches below the surface of the DG.

Yankton, SD

What if you contact another landscaper or two and have them take a look and give you a FREE quote, they might give you ideas and you might find one willing to help you out on the cheap because of your experience. Otherwise I hope someone on here can give you a concrete fix for this. I can imagine how frustrating this must be :(

Berkeley, CA

That's not a bad idea. Thank you for the advice! If anyone else has any ideas as to how to go about fixing it, it would be much appreciated!

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