One of the most effective means of protecting your home from flooding is to ensure your lot drains away from your house. If the surface of your lot doesn’t slope away from your house, water can sit close to your foundation. This can cause water seepage and damage to the foundation walls.

In many older homes, the “backfill zone” – the part of your yard that directly abuts your home – may have low spots directly beside your home. You may need to add and compact soil in the backfill zone to ensure your lot slopes away from the walls of your home.

Ensure that your deck, fence, landscaping and other yard works do not compromise the integrity of your lot grading and drainage.

For more information, visit The City of Calgary’s Lot Grading and Positive Lot Drainage webpage.

Low Impact Development (LID) includes a variety of landscaping and design practices that slows water down, spreads it out and soaks it in, treating stormwater as a resource rather than a waste product. These practices improve the quality and decrease the volume, of stormwater entering our waterways.

Rain gardens are shallow, slightly depressed gardens designed to collect rain water. Rain gardens are easy to construct and can be planted with any combination of trees, shrubs, grasses or perennials, providing an attractive and very effective way to manage stormwater.

These landscaped plant beds capture and filter stormwater before it returns to our stormwater system, and eventually our rivers. When it rains, stormwater is directed into the rain garden. Plants, layers of soil and gravel filter and absorb the stormwater. The silt and other natural solids, like leaves, are collected on top of the gardens. Other pollutants (chemicals and bacteria) are filtered out and used by the soil and plants.

Learn more about residential and engineered rain gardens here.

Pollinator bees and other insects are being negatively impacted by climate changes, including extreme heat and drought conditions. Provide flowering plants such as milkweed and speedwell that help bees and other pollinator insects thrive.

Visit this City website to learn about backyard gardening for pollinators in Calgary.

Plants that are naturally tolerant to drought require little to no watering and will come back to life after a rainy day. In the face of pressures brought on by a changing climate, a water-efficient YardSmart yard helps keep our community resilient.

If you already have an existing lawn irrigation system, make sure it is properly programmed and maintained to reduce wasted water and overwatering.  Visit The City of Calgary’s Irrigation Set-Up and Maintenance webpage for more details on irrigating your property. Drip irrigation, which applies water directly to the root zone of a plant, is the most efficient method for water and energy use.

Adding a base of at least twenty centimeters (eight inches) of good quality soil to your garden or lawn can help with moisture retention and therefore will require less watering.

Adding five to eight centimeters (2-3 inches) of mulch to garden beds and around trees will help retain moisture.

Direct downspouts toward the landscaped areas of your property, including trees, shrubs and rain gardens.