There is nothing like a beautiful landscaped yard. What a welcoming feeling to walk up a walk to a home's entry of colorful flowers and greenery. Such plants as gardenias, roses, and jasmine are wonderful flowers to come home to. If planted near or under a window, during the flowering months, a natural floral fragrance can fill your home just by opening the window to nature's breeze. The glory of nature!

Your home, you have worked so hard to purchase, furnish, and decorate it to fit your personality. Scrimped and saved money for landscaping which can also reflect your love of nature and improve your home's value.

All that lovely landscaping can actually damage your home too. Well, not necessarily the plants, but the location, the watering and the soil for those lovely plants. Let me give you some tips on landscaping that a landscaper and gardener should know, but apparently do not follow, at least from my experience in home repairs.

1. All plants should be planted so that when the foliage is full, there is a minimum of 3 feet between the exterior of the home and the foliage.

2. Use drip irrigation system for shrubs and plants adjacent to the exterior of your home. Sprinklers should NOT be used for plants adjacent to the home. Period, exclamation point.

3. Soil, mulch and bark should be at least 4 inches below the base of the exterior wall of the home and patio concrete or stones 2 inches below.

If any of these three things are not followed, you risk moisture in the exterior walls of your home that can lead to mold and permeate to the interior of your home. If all three of these are not followed, I will guarantee moisture caused problems will occur over time.

Mold is not only caused from leaks under a sink, shower rooms with poor ventilation or leaks in water pipes in the attic or under raised flooring. Mold can be caused by sprinklers spraying water on the side of your home, soil, mulch or decorative bark blocking moisture escape from the exterior walls, by covering the weep screed (metal flashing seen under the base of the stucco wall), wood siding will also absorb the moisture from the soil and bark that it is in contact with, and sometimes, if the plants are planted too close to the walls and sprinklers are used, the foliage can drip water onto the walls or deflect the spray to the wall.

Every time you water your plants near the exterior walls of your home, the walls can absorb some of that water. Molds are natural occurring fungus; they are outside as well as inside your home. All that is needed for mold to grow and flourish is water. Which is provided each and every time you water your beautiful landscaped home.

For more information read: What is a Weep Screed? 
 

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