Best way to hide a cement sewer drain placed in my yard by the city?
We bought the house two years ago knowing we had this drain in our yard. The previous owner had two toddlers so we figured it must not be that big of a deal. We use our yard a lot and it’s an eye sore obviously. Since living here we’ve noticed it isn’t a problem for our toddler nor our dog it’s just ugly. I did contact the city when we first moved in and they said they never come out to check in it. So I guess that means we probably could do whatever we wanted to it and it wouldn’t matter. We do have a lot of water in our yard so we don’t want to block the water flow at all. Last summer we added box woods to three corners in the front and added the little fencing that still has full flow underneath. The post on the fence only goes down on the ends. It’s currently nice storage for our fire pit. I almost want to spray paint or put pallets on top of it with plants.
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I would fill it with plants and flowers. Find plants that like a lot of water and grow well in your area. They will thrive!
After thinking about this for awhile, my suggestion would be to build a raised garden on top of it. That would keep the critters out and not a backbreaker for you.
For the excess water in your yard, a willow tree might help, they love water.
Hello. You might consider landscaping as you would for rain garden. Many municipalities do support regarding installations with cash rebate incentives if you intend to maintain it for years.
https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/null/?cid=nrcs142p2_008528
How about a border of retaining wall blocks around it. Would hide the ugly and really look more like a fire pit.
My thoughts after reading some of the comments are Do NOT put a willow tree there yes they like water but screw up sewer lines. Everyone in my neighborhood had them taken out. I would use cinder block like William said and make the areas look built in. you could even put some potted plants on top of the cinder blocks.
Put a big bench in front of the side that you can see. That will block a lot of it.
I would turn it into a larger area of landscaping so it would disappear. You could do a bed around it and put pots upon it to disguise it.
Build a wishing well around it.
I love the bench idea and you could put planters on either side of it for color, without blocking the water flow. The other thing I was thinking is that planters are probably better than directly landscaping until you know how much water flows that way. Too much and your plants my not thrive.
If you build a semi circular wood bench around this you could screen this off somewhat while still allowing some sort of access. You could add a back that reaches several feet high depending on how much coverage you want.
https://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/skills-and-know-how/carpentry-and-woodworking/how-to-build-a-semi-circular-wooden-bench
Painting it would be a start...let the shrubs fill out a bit. I think it looks ok.
The easiest is to paint it but not a solid color. I used to live in a townhouse which used cheap fill material in the back on a slope. In the middle of it was a piece of concrete about 3 feet wide.
I took an old sponge and dappled thin washes of dark brown, light brown, and olive drab on it. I finished with a very thin wash of black to tie it together. It looked just like a rock when I finished.
All you need is to breakup the visual line of concrete visible through the fence. Craft paint works fine but any kind of paint or stain in the colors of nature will do it.
This is a 15 minute job.