Stormwater-Friendly Landscape Design Ideas for Commercial Properties

Soggy property? Tom Adams has all sorts of smart solutions to fix your commercial property’s excess water issues, from

permeable pavers to rain gardens to a handy list of plants that will thrive at the bottom of your all-important bioretention pond.

The landscape designer at Level Green Landscaping even took special training to make sure his stormwater management landscaping protects the Chesapeake Bay.

“It’s all about slowing down the water,” Adams says, and making sure it doesn’t pool up on your property, flow where it shouldn’t, or rush into the Chesapeake Bay containing harmful pollutants.

What are Adams’ favorite commercial property stormwater solutions? Rain gardens. Permeable pavers. Regrading. Clean and well-tended bioretention ponds. Dry creek beds.

Let’s learn more about stormwater-friendly landscape ideas, including:

• First, How Do You Know If You Have a Stormwater Problem?

• How Excess Water Damages Your Property

• Rain Gardens

• Bioswales

• Permeable Pavers

• Dry Creek Beds

• Regrading

• Who’s Maintaining Your Stormwater Pond? Are They Qualified?

• “It’s All About the Bay”

First, How Do You Know If You Have a Stormwater Problem?

The signs are sometimes obvious, Adams says.

Maybe puddles linger on your hardscape long after the rain stops. He calls it “birdbathing.” The birds might appreciate a quick stop to splash their feathers but standing water like this can damage your property.

“You might see plant material dying rapidly and think, ‘What’s going on?’” he says. “It

might be because the soil is wet all the time.”

Adams tells about pulling up several dying juniper shrubs on a property that were so waterlogged in sticky clay soil “they looked like they were in clay pots.” The junipers had suffered from root rot in their waterlogged soil.

Drainage issues on commercial properties often start with subtle signs, Adams says, with standing water after rain, soggy turf, mulch that washes out and flows away in the rain, or areas that just never seem to get dry.

But if you ignore the signs, they always get worse, and more expensive to fix.

How Excess Water Damages Your Property

Poor drainage and excess stormwater runoff cause big problems over time, Adams says.

“Water washes out your sidewalks and ends up in your building’s foundation,” he says. “Too much water kills your turf and your plants. Sidewalks can cave in. You can get sink holes.”

Too much water creates mold and mildew and causes cracks in interior walls and exterior surfaces. Damp conditions can even encourage mosquitoes and rodents to breed.

“These are big problems and expensive fixes,” Adams says. “If you catch them early you won’t have to spend so much money down the road on repairs.”

And that’s just your property. We’ll talk more about how all this hurts the Chesapeake Bay in a minute.

How does Adams tackle these water issues? With a host of stormwater management landscaping solutions:

Rain Gardens

A rain garden is a shallow depression that’s planted with deep-rooted native plants and grasses. It encourages stormwater to soak slowly into the ground rather than rush into the nearest storm drain.

Plant a rain garden near a water runoff source like a downspout, roof, or driveway and water soaks into the garden rather than gushing straight into the stormwater system.

Meanwhile, a rain garden’s soil filters oil, grease, and other pollutants before slowly releasing the cleaner water into the water table. And these hardworking gardens also look great, planted with attractive native plants.

Bioswales

Think of bioswales as the rain garden’s cousin. Like rain gardens, this stormwater management landscaping provides a path for water to run through slowly, rather than rushing off into a storm sewer or local waterway.

Gently sloped troughs, they’re planted with plants and flowers, providing a path for water to run through slowly and efficiently. These gardens are among the prettiest stormwater-friendly landscape ideas.

Bonus: the plants and soil in the bioswale clean the runoff before it enters the water table.

Permeable Pavers

These porous pavers allow rainwater to seep through, rather than pool and flood your property.

“I love them,” Adams says. “They’re much better for drainage than regular concrete pavers and I think they look better, too.”

Permeable pavers are designed with gaps between them, filled with small bits of gravel.

Beneath the pavers is a deep bed of loose crushed stone. This layer acts as a temporary reservoir to store water during heavy rainfall.

Instead of flowing off the surface, water drains through the gaps and into the stone base, where it gradually seeps into the soil below.

As water moves through the aggregate layers, natural filtration removes pollutants, preventing contaminants from reaching area waterways.

When you have traditional hardscape surfaces like concrete and asphalt, pollutants like chemicals and fertilizer accumulate on the surface. Then, when it rains, these pollutants wash off and enter the stormwater system and the environment.

Many counties and municipalities offer property tax credits to property owners who use stormwater management landscaping techniques like permeable pavers.

Here at Level Green Landscaping, several team members are certified by the Interlocking Concrete Pavers Institute, specifically trained in installing permeable pavers.

Dry Creek Beds

A dry creek bed sounds like something went wrong, but Adams likes this landscaping solution for soaking up extra water.

This landscaping feature is constructed from various sized rocks, providing a designated place for extra water to go when you need it.

When it’s not needed to handle excess water, a dry creek bed still looks nice, fitting in well with the landscaping.

Regrading

Sometimes rainwater management for businesses requires heavy equipment.

This solution levels the landscape, getting rid of low spots or sloped areas that cause water to pool up or flow where it shouldn’t.

Regrading actually reshapes the landscape, moving soil around so gravity directs water away from foundations and low spots, preventing flooding and runoff.

When you have proper grading, water is naturally guided where you want it to go, whether it’s to municipal storm drains, retention ponds or bioswales.

Who’s Maintaining Your Stormwater Pond? Are They Qualified?

If you have a retention basin or stormwater pond on your property, you probably assume it’s working hard out there

collecting water from rain and runoff and releasing it slowly, at a nice, easy rate that prevents flooding or erosion.

But is yours really working? Not without regular expert maintenance, Adams says.

If you neglect these commercial property stormwater solutions, they won’t drain properly. They get clogged. A tree could uproot and cause a weak spot in the embankment, causing the dam to fail.

But not all landscape maintenance crews know how to properly care for these important ponds, which means damaging stormwater runoff from your property’s pond could end up in area waterways, including the beautiful Chesapeake Bay.

Adams is one of several Level Green team members certified in professional landscape training to properly design and maintain the structures and features that keep stormwater under control.

The landscaping certification is administered by the Chesapeake Conservation Landscaping Council, a non-profit dedicated to conservation landscaping to protect the Chesapeake Bay. The training teaches landscaping professionals how to avoid landscaping practices that are harmful to the environment.

As part of the training, Adams visited retention and detention ponds and rain gardens, learned about how they’re designed and maintained, and came away with a comprehensive list of the right plants to use when he designs or re-designs these features.

Plants are important components of stormwater ponds, acting as natural water purifiers and helping stabilize the banks and control erosion.

“You can’t use just any plant in a bioretention cell,” Adams says. “The plants at the bottom have to handle the worst of the worst conditions, from complete drought to being completely submerged.” As the water ebbs and flows, plants have to be adaptable.

“One of the classes in the training was just about the right plants to use,” he says.

Native plants that originated here typically work best for stormwater ponds, Adams says, as well as in rain gardens and other areas where excess water collects.

“They’re used to our soil, to heavy rain and flooding,” he says. “They’re built for this.”

While stormwater ponds as commercial property stormwater solutions are popular, and increasingly used in new construction, “sometimes they haven’t been maintained for years,” Adams says. That can mean big fines for property owners if they don’t pass periodic inspections.

Municipalities want to make sure that retention and detention ponds don’t fail, so they conduct regular inspections, checking for signs of erosion around the pond banks, clogged pipes, sediment buildup.

When it’s time for your pond inspection, you want the security of knowing trained professionals have been maintaining your stormwater pond and ensuring it’s helping to protect the environment.

“We get bioretention ponds working better than they did when they were installed,” Adams says.

“It’s All About the Bay”

Communities in the Chesapeake Bay area are known for their strict stormwater management regulations, from Montgomery County Md to Washington DC. More municipalities continue to follow suit.

Why so much effort to control excess stormwater?

“The biggest driving factor is protecting the Chesapeake Bay,” Adams says. “A lot of runoff really messes with the ecosystems.”

Here’s how:

• Unlike agricultural runoff, which has actually decreased in some areas, polluted runoff from urban and suburban hardscape surfaces is rising as development increases.
• Stormwater carries high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizers and pet waste, fueling algae blooms that create low-oxygen "dead zones" where aquatic creatures can’t survive. Sediment from runoff also buries shellfish and blocks sunlight that underwater grasses need to grow. More than 3,600 species of plants and animals depend on a healthy Chesapeake Bay to survive.
• Rapid, high-volume runoff from rain storms erodes stream banks, destroys habitats, and carries polluting toxins into the bay.

“As the tributaries that feed the bay merge together and flow into it, we’re trying to stop issues at the source,” Adams says.

Need Stormwater Management Landscaping in DC, Maryland, or Virginia? Trust Level Green

Adams grew up in the country, surrounded by pastures, fields, woods and creeks. He’s quick to tell you, “My happy place is in nature.”

Here at Level Green Landscaping, our livelihood depends on a healthy environment and our team members are all nature lovers who care for the earth. They pair that passion with education, training and certifications, including in sustainable landscaping and stormwater management.

If you want to help keep the Chesapeake Bay clean and safe, partner with a commercial landscaping company with specialized training in how to do that.

Our expertise in constructing and maintaining sustainable commercial landscaping in DC, Maryland and Northern Virginia can help you ensure your property is doing its part to protect the surrounding waterways.

If you’re not already a Level Green Landscaping client, we’d love to add you to our growing list of happy customers.

Our focus is on commercial properties like offices, mixed-use sites, HOAs, municipalities and institutions in Maryland, Washington DC and parts of Virginia.

Contact us at 202-544-0968. You can also request a free consultation online to meet with us one-on-one.

We’d love to hear from you.