LESLIE: Now I’ve got Michelle with a question about how to build a flower bed. What can we do for you today?
MICHELLE: I had this huge flower bed right by my house and it’s about as big as a one-car garage. Anyway, I know that it’s to be sloped away from the house but I was wondering, if I have a raised flower bed, how far that raised flower bed should be from the house.
TOM: That’s a great question. Sometimes, people put it right against the house, Michelle, and then it’s great for the flowers but it also holds all this water against your foundation. And it can cause flooding in lower levels, like crawlspaces and basements, or it can even damage your foundation.
So, when build a flower bed you need to make sure – you essentially need to build it on a hill in a sense that what you want to do is establish the grade that slopes away from the house first. And then once that grade is established, then you could plant flowers or shrubs or whatever else you want to do.
What you don’t want to do when you build a flower bed is kind of have an edging around the outside of the bed so that – a lot of times, you’ll see that people will use railroad ties or scalloped bricks or block or something like that. And think of it as a trough that they build around their house. And that’s what happens: it holds water. So just don’t impede drainage, a good flow of water away from the exterior wall, and you’ll be fine.
MICHELLE: OK. Well, thank you so much.
TOM: You’re welcome, Michelle.
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