5 Landscaping Tips To Protect Your Foundation

Most homeowners in New Haven, CT, overlook their foundation when landscaping. This can be an expensive mistake. Neglecting your foundation when designing your yard might lead to drainage issues, soil movement, and other problems that affect your home’s structural stability.
Here are five tips to protect your foundation during landscaping and advice on what to do if you already have problems in this part of your home.
5 Landscaping Tips for Your Foundation
1. Don’t Plant Trees Too Close To Your Foundation
While trees provide shade and privacy in your yard, you’ll want to think carefully about where you place them. Otherwise, you could risk damaging your foundation.
Many trees in Connecticut, such as the tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima), are known for their large size and rapid root growth. If positioned too close to your home, their roots can damage your foundation over time.
2. Properly Grade Your Landscape
Landscape grading is one of the most important things you can do when designing a new yard. This means creating a downward slope from your foundation to the rest of the yard, which might improve drainage and prevent water from pooling in one spot.
Grading your yard may be difficult without a professional, so consider working with a local landscaping expert. These professionals can use special equipment to add topsoil to your yard’s low points and level out high points, creating a positive grade.
3. Use Exterior Waterproofing Solutions
Heavy rainfall, common in New Haven County and the rest of Connecticut, can pool around your foundation and enter the structure through cracks and other openings. That’s why you should consider waterproofing your foundation from the outside when landscaping your yard.
Various waterproofing products defend your foundation from excess water, including gutters, downspouts, exterior waterproofing membranes, and exterior drainage systems. Alternatively, you can protect your foundation from the inside. For example, wall anchors and carbon fiber reinforcement seal existing cracks in foundation walls.
4. Water Your Soil
When watering your plants, don’t forget to water the soil around your home. Doing so can prevent soil particles from shrinking during spells of dry weather and allow the soil to absorb water properly when it rains again. Soil particle shrinkage may lead to your foundation settling or cracking.
You may want to invest in a drip irrigation system, which can slowly drip water into your soil at the root zone and help manage moisture levels. This can be particularly beneficial here in New Haven, an area known for its clay soils, which expand when wet and shrink when dry. While a drip irrigation system won’t stop this process, it can maintain an optimal moisture level, potentially reducing the effects of clay soil movement.
5. Don’t Cover Your Foundation With Plants
Filling your yard with plants might look great, but try not to cover the area around your foundation. If plants close to your home retain too much moisture, it can seep into your foundation through cracks, leading to increased basement humidity, mold growth, and other problems.
What To Do If Landscaping Has Damaged Your Foundation
Previous landscaping in your yard may have already caused water pooling, growing tree roots, and other issues that could jeopardize your foundation. If this is the case, you’ll want to work with a foundation repair specialist like Groundworks. We can inspect your foundation, determine the root cause of any damage, and suggest repair products that work for you.
Our foundation repair solutions include:
- Foundation piers: Piering, also called underpinning, can stabilize your foundation by shifting its weight from unstable soil to foundation piers anchored in stable soil. Helical piers and push piers are examples of foundation piers.
- Wall anchors: If you have bowing or leaning walls, wall anchors can restore them to their initial position.
We also specialize in basement waterproofing products like sump pump systems and interior drains that prevent water from entering your downstairs space and causing further damage to your foundation.

How Groundworks Protects Your Foundation
Serving New Haven and the surrounding communities, Groundworks offers foundation repair solutions that can reverse any damage caused by landscaping. All our custom-engineered products have long-lasting warranties, providing peace of mind. Contact us to learn more.
FAQs
Yes, proper grading, installing proper drainage, and strategically placed plants can improve drainage and direct water away from your foundation.
Minimally. One small section of the wall anchor system will have to be placed below the ground in your yard. However, this won’t require intense excavation like other types of foundation repair.
Professional concrete leveling is designed to be minimally invasive, with little to no damage to surrounding landscaping.