Earthworks
Directing and retaining rainwater for landscape use to support plant growth and reduce municipal water for irrigation, reducing off-site stormwater flow volumes and non-point source pollutants.
Clearwater Designs uses a number of methods to allow greater percolation of water into your landscape. Your irrigation will penetrate deeper into the ground, allowing the roots of your plants to have access to more moisture for longer periods. These methods include:
- Berms: Raised feature to slow runoff and promote infiltration, or to redirect flow to another water harvesting feature.
- Basins: Depressed feature for Collection (Retention/Detention) and Infiltration.
- Contour Swales: A combination of an elongated basin with a berm laid out on slight slopes to slow and infiltrate water evenly along the slope.
- Diversion Swales: Depressed feature to convey runoff slowly and promote infiltration.
- Terraces: Retained feature useful for rapid grade change and increasing plantable area.
- Integrated Design: This is a design process which places water harvesting features in intentional relationships with other site elements and within the natural and human context of the site. It’s goal is to create systems that are interconnected, and whose value and utility are greater than the sum of their parts.
Benefits
- Increases plant productivity, which may also provide food production and/or wildlife habitat.
- Allows plants to access moisture stored in soil when available, even in drought.
- Requires no human input or action to function.
- Typically uses rainwater immediately, as it falls, or within a short period.
- Reduces runoff from your landscape, helping to prevent erosion and flooding
Questions? Contact us today about setting up a water collection system!
Article used with permission from GrowWater.Org, with our thanks.