Lawns are an important part of your property. Good lawns improve the appearance and curb appeal of your home. They provide an area to enjoy the outdoors in both the front and back yard, for your family as well as friends and guests. They also act as a watershed for your property, allowing water from impermeable surfaces such as your roof and driveway to be absorbed before they become a problem. However, bad lawns can hurt your home and even cause damage: today we will look at five reasons to grade your yard and create a great lawn.
1. Avoid Home Flooding
The first reason to grade your yard is to eliminate potential flooding after major rain storms. By grading the lawn away from your home (about two to three inches every ten feet), the slope will allow the water to flow away from your home while being absorbed into the ground. To learn about more ways to minimize flooding through landscape, read our Landscaping to Minimalize Flooding article.
2. Get Rid of Lawn Puddles
After a rain, do you have areas of your lawn that form puddles or even small lakes? Not only can these lead to the flooding mentioned above, but if they stay for long enough they can also kill the grass in the area. These puddles might form due to depressions (see below) or soil composition. By leveling and replacing the top layer of soil, you remove the most common cause of lawn puddles. If these puddles are persistent, they may be due to The Common Causes of a Persistent Wet Yard.
3. Smooth Out a Bumpy Lawn
A lawn with uneven ground is unpleasant:
- Unpleasant to mow
- Unpleasant (or sometimes hazardous) to walk on
- Very unpleasant to lay on
Leveling out your property and eliminating a bumpy lawn can breathe new life into your front and back yard, as well as help deal with the issues mentioned above. If you’re looking to use your lawn as it was intended, consider smoothing it out.
4. Time for Hardscaping
If you’re thinking about installing walkways, patios, pools, or retaining walls, now’s the time to also think about grading your lawn. A lot of these features go hand in hand: have a steeply sloping lawn? Install a retaining wall and grade the lawn to the new level! Leveling out a lawn before installing a walkway or patio can improve the overall appearance and the hardscape installation process.
5. Revitalize Your Soil
Sometimes regardless of what you do, you’ve got a sickly lawn. The reason could be that you’ve got bad soil. You may have had poor soil from the beginning, or over the years your grass and plants could have sapped the soil of nutrients. Caring for a nutrient deprived lawn during the grading process is a perfect way to fortify or replace the topsoil, allowing you to have a greener lawn and garden.
Proper yard grading is done with the right tools, and New England Enterprises specializes in having the right expertise to use them. From grading and drainage to heavy-duty landscaping and excavation, we have the ability to help you with any major project, start to finish, residential to commercial. Contact us today to get started.