We're a couple months into the new house & these 2 spots make mowing & street parking a pain.

Want to build these up, to level on the street side & would like the roots covered on the house side.

Suggestions? Just bring in fill-dirt & grass seed?
It's not an overly steep ditch, but I imagine getting whatever filler to hold is going to be a challenge if there's rain, until it gets settled/rooted in.

That looks like serious drainage. If you fill over the concrete (or possibly gunite), whatever you try to grow on top may not do well. If you rip out the concrete/gunite drainage, the local government may (or may not) have something to say about it.

My thought on fixing it would be to rip out the hardscape, fill with good clay soil, building a swale that is wider and has less steep sides. This assumes that I first checked to make sure doing so wouldn’t get me sideways with local gooberment.

Even so, I would have concerns about it backing up on the input side as the bottom of my new wider swale would be higher than the bottom of the pipe under the driveway.

This sort of thing is a whole lot easier if it is wholly internal to your property and doesn’t affect anyone else.

Good luck whatever you decide!

Do I understand you want to fill in a drainage ditch. Possibly the city/county will tell you what is allowed such as installing pipe & covering the pipe.

That drainage is there for a reason. See what happens with a hard rain. Covering roots is not going to work long term. Grind them out if you must.

quote:

Do I understand you want to fill in a drainage ditch. Possibly the city/county will tell you what is allowed such as installing pipe & covering the pipe.

^^^^^
Well make sure the pipe of of sufficient diameter. The county did that at the owner's request and it nicely flooded his property since the culvert was too small. Get an engineer if you must.

Sorry for lack of clarity, the 2nd & 3rd photos show the areas.
Where the ground is worn down/eroded from the roadway & has a dropoff, and the area with the exposed roots on the yard side.

Areas in the red squares, roughly:

I think the op only wants to level the top against the street pavement, not fill the drainage ditch.

I would use a strip of drainage gravel maybe 6” wide along the street. It will look nice and grass never grows good very close to pavement anyhow.

The right side (from the photo above) won't be a problem. Fill with top soil, making sure it's somewhat compacted so it won't fall again due to settling, but not hard-packed, and seed it.

You may want to use straw (I don't like straw) or Pennington seed starter mat to help retain moisture.

The left side, though, is a problem. You could try the same as above. You'll definitely want to protect it with the Pennington product I mentioned to inhibit runoff.

That left side is the way it is because of both runoff, the trees sucking all the moisture up, and lack of sunlight, unless I miss my guess. If so: That will continue to be a challenge.

In both cases: They'll need to be kept moist continuously for at least two weeks for the seed to germinate. The Pennington mat will help retain moisture.

I would consult with a local turf specialist to determine the proper seed for those areas. Look for a nearby landscape supply place, such as a Site One.

You have to be careful about “burying” the roots. Oddly enough, you can kill the tree by doing that. I know from bitter experience. Maples, Beech, Aspen and Willows are particularly susceptible to problems from having a thick layer of soil put over exposed roots.

quote:

Originally posted by arfmel:
You have to be careful about “burying” the roots. Oddly enough, you can kill the tree by doing that.

Well, you learn something new every day. I did not know this. Why You Shouldn't Put Soil Over a Tree's Exposed Roots.

^ Good to know.
Having to 'mow' that are with a weedeater is tedious. May go the gradual approach & build it up slowly.

Thanks for the tips. Will look into doing to street side first, since it should be simpler, apart from having a narrow street & needing to partially park on the grass. I'll have to block that area off until it's established.

We're in the south so we have warm season lawns so we need to skeptically consider advice from northerners with cool season lawns as they are much different. One reason, most of our lawns are sod only (St Augustine is predominant lawn type in Houston), but Bermuda and Zoysia can be seeded (~$100/bag though). In other words, we can't go to the Big Box store and buy a bag of $10 to $20 seed to put over fresh dirt as about 90% of the products will die quickly as they're for cool season lawns (i.e. HD and Lowe's sells shit they shouldn't sell in the south). Doesn't apply here, but another reason is that some cool season lawn chemicals will kill a warm season lawn.

The street side of the ditch looks like erosion. I'd fill with soil with substance, sod, and put in some temporary erosion control (e.g. silt fence around it). A local example of soil w/ substance is called lawn mix and is available in Conroe at Nature's Way Resources.

The house side looks like a combination of shallow roots and erosion. Randy Lemmon is our local lawn and garden guru and has been on AM talk radio in Houston for 20ish years. He has two pages on his site that are of help:
(1) Deep root feeding / watering. This is both a short-term (i.e. do something now) and a long-term problem (keep doing for years) to address the lack of water at 12 to 18 inches depth. I'm about 3 weeks from doing my annual deep root feeding on my tress.
(2) You can trim one big root per year

Thanks T, I'll look into those as well.

First off, I'd find out where the Right-of-Way line is at for the road, ditch and utilities. If you touch that ditch and it causes damage up stream, you will be held liable for the damage.

Typically, structures like this are owned/maintained by the city, county, or township and you really need to work through their engineer's office before you do anything you may later regret.

The concrete ditch is usually indicative of a few things: flat slope, low velocity flow, erodible soil conditions, etc. Otherwise, they wouldn't go to the expense of putting it in.

Depending on how attached you are to the tree, you could always cut it down and grind out the stump/roots. Probably a whole lot cheaper alternative than messing with that ditch.

I would agree with jcsabolt2. A lot of towns have a 10' easement from the road. I would contact the town where you live. They may explain your options.