Simple Pre-Rain Maintenance Tasks Save Money, Time and Peace of Mind
October 2025. By Oscar Ortega: Forecasters anticipate light rains this week and next. This year, even light rain can impact our safety throughout LA. While each year we help Angelenos respond and repair to stormwater scares, it’s much safer, less expensive, and more fulfilling to help you prepare. We’re happy to share our how! Here’s how we turn stormwater’s tricks into treats for you and your garden.
Here are 8 tricks we use to treat you and your garden during rainy season:
Calibrate Irrigation: Over-hydrated soil moves with water, and overwatering can create some scary situations. If you installed a weather based controller to trick the drought, sit back and enjoy the rainfall.
Trick to Treat: LA County Public Works, MWD, LADWP, other water agencies and several municipalities are still offering rebates for weather based controllers and drip irrigation. While eerily invisible, their impacts on foliage and family budgets are wonderful treats!
Clear Gutters: Those in high fire severity zones know the scare of a dirty gutter! They need to keep gutters clear of everything from dried leaves to nesting 365. The same maintenance process amplifies the safety of structures at the beach.
Trick to Treat: If cleaning gutters is not work you enjoy, consider installing metal gutter guards or even fine wire mesh. These effort-saving products keep gutters both fire and rainy-ready year 365.
fed the Sierra Madre Post Office bioswale.
Direct Downspouts: Often gutters empty right at the foundation of a home – scary! Simply directing them a couple feet out into the garden turns a trick into a treat for foliage.
Trick to Treat: Direct a downspout to a rain garden to sink water or a rain barrel (rebates available!) to save it and meter out the treats to your most boo-tiful friends throughout the year.
Add Mulch: When rain falls on barren soil, flowing into it can be tricky. Hardened soil will encourage water to run. Oversaturated soil will move with water.
Trick to Treat: Organic mulch is the ultimate treat for a garden. It helps soil retain hydration and becomes a frightfully useful fertilizer as it decays. Like tree canopy and the leaves of foliage, it also slows rainfall on it’s way into the soil, giving the soil time to absorb all the deliciousness. That little delay in time can prevent stormwater from playing tricks with soil stability.
Create a Foundation Buffer: While water likes to flow, a trick or two can have it linger near a foundation – that attracts wood-eating monsters (have you ever seen a termite face – yikes!).
Trick to Treat: A two foot gravel or stone buffer repels monster by encouraging the soil to dry. It’s more than termites – add a buffer, and creepy-crawly spiders will look for habitat a little further from yours.
Clear Established Waterways: If you have dry rivers, bioswales, or infiltration pits, make sure their drains and bottoms are free of fall decor like dry leaves, webs, and even boo-tiful obstructions. If you do not have these water-directing features, but you’ve noticed where garden flows on your property, similar actions can be useful. Sorry – no tricks here, just a little work!
Direct Water Flow: If you do not have topographical shifts to direct water, it’s pretty likely you are “in the flats” where clay soil is common. That can be tricky when an over-abundance of water fails to infiltrate the soil.
Trick to Treat: Sandbags can help encourage water to take a productive direction. They should be placed to inhibit water flow toward structures. Scared of the aesthetic? Seat some pumpkins or skeletons on top.
Consider Common Areas: We find nothing scarier than the tragedy of the commons – and nothing more boo-tiful than teamwork. A pre-filled drain or street-side gutter can lead to problems both up and downstream. If you notice a problem, consider helping a neighbor by clearing it, taking action with neighbors to address it, or reporting it via the relevant municipal “Go,” 311 app or LA County Works.
Trick to Treat: We’ve found no better way to create community and friendships than to ask for help. We all need it from time to time, and most really enjoy providing some.
Whether we act in team or in our own spaces, each whiplash-weather prepared garden protects Angelenos both up and downstream. Stormwater, like other predictable weather events, does not respect property lines or city boundaries. When it comes to making life in LA a treat, we are all in this together.
