Creating Berms and Swales - A Front Yard Foodscape Case Study

At this St. Louis suburban residence, the clients had two goals: grow food and stop the water pooling in their driveway.

The team at Custom Foodscaping created a design to slow and store water running down their gentle front yard slope while creating an ecological edible landscape.

The solution, of course, was to build berms and swales!

Using earthmoving machines, the team dug ditches and shaped the excavated soil to create berms, which make a sort of obstacle course for water. When the water is interrupted by the berms, it slows the rate of flow and and adds ecological benefits as it seeps into the berms and irrigates the plants.

In addition, the team created basins in the yard to expand the water-holding capacity of the system and provide an additional planting niche.

The team swapped out crab apples and Bradford Pears for the full foodscape menu: Native serviceberry trees, Pawpaw trees, Liberty apples, Nanking Cheries, Illinois Everbearing Mullberries plus loads of native pollinators in the rain garden.

Less driveway pooling, more edible abundance!

[tcm]

Would love to see an update since it’s been a year. Wanting something like this in our smaller front yard

[fionafresh]

I’m about to put in a native plants garden in NY as part of a lawn reclamation project. Planning to use a berm to smoother existing grass and weeds, especially mugwort. Did you plant those paw paws directly into the mulch? I was planning to add a layer of compost on top of the cardboard layer and plant in that. Great channel btw. Looking forward to checking out more content.

[DestinyLabMusic]

Could you use netted pebble tile over a rounded surface like a berm? When I put weed barrier down with regular gravel or bark chips over my rosebush berm mounds the gravel or bark chips always ends up rolling off exposing the black weed barrier over time.

I want to get some netted pebble tile like cobblestone rock and basically tile it down with a rubberized flexible grout that will last long term on my berm mounds with holes around my rose bushes and plants to grow. Have you ever seen anything like this before?

[PreparelikeJoseph]

Im in st louis. Im having to put in berms to stop my basement from flooding

[alishaberrey]

I live in Cape Girardeau. Where do you buy your plants?

[jamesofallthings]

Playing in first person on a gardening sim. You really want to zoom out, but you just can't.