Nice house you have there, it'd be a shame if it slid into the ditch

Post date: 2021-05-06 16:31:49

Mr. Getawaysticks and I bought a brand new home NW of Fort Worth. We closed just after the winter disaster here, and everything was a scramble moving from across the country. The large sloped yard was graded, but tons of rain and wind caused what wasn't covered in sod to erode terribly. How can we stop this in a hurry?

Everything is red clay here. The yard was sodded, but only around the house, leaving roughly 3/4 of an acre not sodded and just bare dirt. We are on a corner lot that is in the low point, so we get drainage from behind and next to us.

After we moved in (March) and watched in horror as our elevation was disappearing, we called around for hydromulch and were told by multiple companies that we had to wait until May for hydromulch due to the cold spring weather. We knew we couldn't wait that long near the house, and we had a truckload of sod laid. We still have 1/2 acre not covered at all, and that is still washing away. Here's a picture after it rained for days last week.

Not pictured: The side of the house that has a more drastic slope, but also has a drainage ditch.]

There's about a 10-15' elevation between the low point in our yard and the low point of the neighbor - spanning about 100 feet but mostly just in the last 50 feet or so. Our property ends just before their driveway - you can see their sod. They have had two sets of sod washed away, river rock washed away, and then got a French Drain installed. I am trying to avoid all of my expendable income for the next several years going to this problem.

Notes: 1) We do not care at all about having a lush green lawn. If it were all weeds (or rocks!), that would be fine. We just want to be done worrying about this.
2) We went out this evening to see if we can smooth the ground and lay grass seed, which I know is dicey. The ground is rock hard now that it hasn't rained for 48 hours, and there's a lot of (small) rocks. Probably from the neighbor's yard.
3) We could just get more sod, but it's ridiculously expensive.
4) We are not planning to dig up the part of the yard next to the neighbors that already is mostly intact with weeds. I was going to just plant some wildflowers there and let those go.
5) We might have to do a french drain or something later for the low point in our sod, but that's not the emergency we are focusing on now.

We have a little money we can throw at this problem. Nothing is in our Deed Restrictions that says we have to have grass, it just says landscaping has to be 'complete' within 90 days (but many other neighbors all have incomplete backyards like this).

What are our options given the tight time frame? Hydromulch - how much of a slam dunk is it? Can we just throw down pea gravel or something? Erosion Control Fabric? Riprap?

Thanks for any advice from a couple of landscaping noobs.

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