Creating “Bermese” Gardens

By Patricia Diaz, from the June 2003 Newsletter

Instead of having a boring, level yard area, consider creating “bermese” gardens in your landscaping theme. (Bermese gardens is a great term coined by our esteemed editor Bill London.) Bermed areas can transform your lawn into privacy space and beautiful areas of wildlife plantings. Gina Gormley has done just that with her lawn area and enjoys regular visitations of pheasants and quail, along with more privacy from street noise.

When Gina moved to her new house about 4 ½ years ago, she wanted to plant some native plantings in her front yard. To her chagrin, however, she couldn’t even get the shovel to make a dent in the hardened dirt of the yard. That’s when she decided to create her “bermese” garden area and had three or four truckloads of half-compost and half-topsoil delivered. After raking it into three-foot sloped mounds, she planted native plantings – syringa, wild rose, golden currant, blue willow, a tamarack tree, and also juniper trees, a lilac bush, and two different maple trees. Surrounding these plantings, she has lots of flowers, both seasonal and perennial, including a wonderful perennial sweet pea and lots of bulbs. Her berms are across the front of the lawn area and along the side, forming an L-shaped berm area. Gina didn’t have to dig up the lawn to create these areas, she just had the soil delivered and planted right in it. What a wonderfully smart idea and a much easier way to improve your landscaping.

I investigated berms on the Internet and found some valuable hints for creating perfect bermed areas. One of the most important, of course, is the soil that you choose. You will need lots of it or your berm will look like a leftover heap of soil instead of a purposeful berm. If you can’t afford to purchase all top-quality topsoil, then make sure that at least the top twelve inches is topsoil. Don’t use gravel underneath because your soil will wash through the gravel. Instead you can use a coarse fill followed by at least ten inches of clay.

Another consideration is the slope of your berm. One side of your berm should have a gradual slope while the other should have a steeper slope. You can also vary the slopes of your berms to create a more natural appearance. If you are mulching your berms with wood chips, purchase shredded or elongated ones rather than round so they don’t roll off the berms. The same thing applies with rock mulch. The best gradient for your mound to help slow down the water and erosion is a slope of 4:1 or 5:1. Mulching is important for slopes steeper than that.

Something that you might not consider is the fact that construction of a berm can affect drainage patterns. A friend of mine decided to create lots of bermed areas in the yard of her new house. Because the house was brand new with no landscaping, she didn’t know the drainage patterns yet and ended up creating a series of mini lakes. So try to not alter any existing drainage in your yard. If you can’t avoid that, you can install a culvert.

Even small berms can have their own microclimate so it’s important to note your bermed area’s temperature patterns, wind speed, and drainage. Slopes that face south and west will have warmer temperatures than those facing north and east. Plantings on the highest parts of the berms will probably become greener more quickly. And since water will drain off the top more quickly, plants that are more tolerant of drier conditions should be planted towards the tops of the berms.

Berms make wonderful sites for rock and alpine gardens and once you note the microclimates you’ve created, you can nestle great little gardens on your berms. You’ll also want to note the way you view your berm before you install your plants. If your berm is backed up against something so that you don’t view it from one side, you can plant your tallest things in the back. But if you view your berm from all sides, you’ll need to consider the heights of your plantings so that the tall things won’t hide the shorter ones. Group your trees on the berm in natural groupings rather than in an isolated pattern, and plant shrubs in masses that move gracefully around or across the berms.

If you’d like to learn more about creating “Bermese” gardens, you might want to look at this Web page on Building Soil Berms from the Sustainable Urban Landscape Information Series.

Pat Diaz enjoys gardening in the woods east of Moscow. The turkeys are nesting, the snowshoe hares are almost all brown, and pretty soon the fawns will be born. Isn’t Spring wonderful?

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