Our Environment, Animal Tips & the Great Outdoors

By FireDean Schilling

There is a saying among horticultural pros: “Plant it high, it won’t die. Plant it low, it won’t grow.” Never before has this been more true. Violent rains are the new normal – remember July and August? Once upon a time, these were the two months that Mother Nature would typically suck moisture from the ground faster than a thirsty horse.

According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, in July and August of 2023, Dutchess County received nearly 14 inches of rain. 2024 hasn’t been much different. 

Any landscape project needs to consider these realities at the planning stage. The best way to understand how water is moving in any given outdoor area is to go outside, either during a heavy rain or immediately following one, and observe. Doing so makes it easy to identify areas that are puddling or pooling and need improved drainage. 

The importance of the aggregates 

The next thing to do is make friends with the aggregates. These are materials like sandy fill, pebbles, river rock, Item#4 (a popular aggregate mostly used for its compaction qualities), stone dust, and fieldstone, among others. 

The simplest way to understand their usefulness is to use your mind’s eye to look beneath the asphalt roads you drive on. Think of the asphalt itself as icing on a cake. Roads are 95 percent aggregate or piles of small stones and only the surface is asphalt. Aggregates don’t absorb water, they displace it. Laying piles of aggregate in succession creates a path on which materials can move, effectively creating dry land. 

When you create a meandering garden footpath or seating area on a hill or in the midst of a low lying landscape, you are essentially doing the same thing as what they do when they build roads. It’s important you do all this aggregate stuff before you create your garden. 

Plan, plan, plan  

Yes, you DO want to plan/envision your plantings and gardens in areas that are already high. With that being said, you don’t want to actually create them just yet. First, install your drains and pathways. 

Once this is accomplished, you can then add volume to your planting areas, being careful to add sandy fill or sandy top soil before you add richer garden soil that is more directly beneficial to the plants. Garden soils retain water, while sandy soils drain quickly and work well beneath garden soils. Plants need water, but they can’t survive if it doesn’t drain quickly. Your overall objective should be to get water to slide away into the drainage areas quickly and not linger. Think of your garden areas as islands, water needs to be diverted away from them on ALL sides. 

There are several ways to do this on your property, but French drains are the most popular. There are a ton of videos on YouTube about how to make them, but what is explained less is how to naturalize a French drain so that what you see on the surface looks beautiful. 

For that, you’ll want to create what are known as dry creeks above some of your drain areas. In many cases, a dry creek without a French drain works just fine. Dry creeks look best if a lot of attention is given to make them look like they sound. A dry creek meanders, it twists and turns, and it never moves in a straight line. They are not uniform in width either, nor are the stones you find in them of uniform size. Typically, a dry creek has randomly spaced groups of variable sized boulders that are partially buried. These larger rocks can be further naturalized by simply adding native perennials in or around each group – as long as the cultivar is one that tolerates wetter soil.

So now the fun part – time to plant! Not quite. 

Once you’ve broken down your space into drainage areas, pathways, and gardens, you will notice that a new problem has emerged. All the preceding work will have added considerable volume to your garden areas. The effect of this likely means that the planting areas themselves, while desirably higher than everything else, appear unnaturally steep. 

This is where an appreciation for berms and swales comes into play. Now is when you take a little extra time to shovel and compact the garden areas and sculpt them into gently sloping surfaces. These look best when they are made to taper slowly to the lowest point in tear shaped formations. The longer the stretch of space you have to accomplish this, the easier it will be, but it is entirely possible in small spaces as well.

Now you’re ready to plant like a pro! Right away you’ll notice that there is a hidden bonus to all the extra steps you’ve taken. Not only will water wick away quickly during the random monsoon rains we are faced with, but your gardens will look more amazing than ever before.

About the author: FireDean Schilling is a landscape designer who has designed and installed 100+ exterior landscapes and dozens of greenwall interiors. His work has been featured in the press, won numerous “Best of HOUZZ” awards, and attracted a steady stream of high profile private and commercial projects. When he’s not running his garden business, he teaches Landscape Design both privately and at the New York School of Interior Design in New York City. Learn more about FireDean here.