Hi! I have this giant rock in the back of my home that lets water into my basement whenever it rains or snows. Looking to possible add a rain garden here as there’s plans to add a French drain but I wanted to see if covering the French drain with plants will be possible. This area does not get any sun so it’ll be all shade. Thank you!
by rengoboo
7 Comments
i’d say eastern red columbine really fits the bill here
It might make more sense to direct a French drain to a separate rain garden area. The purpose of a rain garden is to hold water and allow it to soak into the ground slowly, which is at odds with the function of a French drain.
I don’t think you want a rain garden so close to the house. After the French drain is installed, I would add more soil to that area to minimize the depression and try to achieve a slope away from the house and across the rocks if possible. Looks like you could add soil there without encroaching on the siding. Rain gardens should be far away from your foundation.
While i detest landscape fabric, it might be worth using in this case to direct water away from the e house, down the rock, and toward a drain and/or rain garden
Marginal wood fern, it loves rocky areas where water can trickle down but it can handle dry conditions. But I’d put it by the house on top of the rocks rather than on the bottom where water would collect and make it too wet
You’re including my day job in my hobby subreddits.
A French drain is the wrong solution to the problem of water getting into your basement. It looks like they used the boulder/bedrock as the foundation (which is fine) but the grout has failed and now you get water under it. Pull that moss back and clean the bottom of the foundation and install a new sealant. I’m happy to help you select one, but we’ll do that in a DM. Once you have the area sealed, put the moss back. I’m not sure you’ve got enough soil there for much more than mosses and some small grasses, but that will help move the water as well. Once the water is off the top of the boulder, you can put a French drain in, but you’d have to chip a huge trench into the boulder which is expensive and unsightly.
While the moss is pulled away from the house, drill down through the rock in the foreground of this picture at about a 45° angle, drill the hole so that you can put a piece of copper pipe through it, the plants will never grow into the copper pipe, and it will continue to function as a drain for the area and keep water off of your foundation. You can also seal the wall on the inside. I would recommend injecting the crack with a sealant rated for use in structural installations.
This is not a good spot for a rain garden since it’ll just collect water and pass it into the foundation more efficiently.
You’ll want to address how the water ends up there and reroute it instead.