What Are the Pros and Cons of Houston Soil?

What is the constituency of Houston soil?
The constituency of the soil in the Houston landscape is unique. It is composed of mostly clay. As such, it offers the landscapers some very unique opportunities for lawn and garden designs. In some ways, even, it makes the landscape designer’s job all the more easy.

How does this make the landscaper’s job easy?
The soil in the Houston landscape makes our job easier in the sense that we do not have to deal with rocks in the soil the way landscapers do in other parts of the country. For instance, installing a pipe or preparing a garden in Austin will often call for the landscape architect to literally have to saw through rock.

Does the Houston soil present any disadvantage to the garden designer?
In a world of duality, of course there are always disadvantages along with advantages. In our terrain, there is always a need to break up the clay dirt in yards and till it with the right soil mixtures. This is because, to be completely honest with our readership, Houston is not the best place to plant a garden without professional assistance and specific expertise in botany available only through firms with trained landscaping professionals.

The clay soil is too compact for plant roots to easily expand through the soil. This makes it difficult to grow. The soil also doesn’t drain very well, which can cause plants to drown.

Can anything be done to overcome these problems?
This is not a difficult thing at all for an experienced Houston landscape design firm such as Exterior Worlds to accomplish. However, do-it-yourselfers often fail to break the soil up sufficiently and/or over fertilize it with the wrong compounds.

What starts out as a beautiful gardening soon withers and dies, requiring us to rework the soil until it is ready for more professional garden design that will endure the elements and contribute enduring beauty to the Houston landscape.

How is this type of soil good for tree growth?
If we are talking about exotic tree species, honestly, this is not the best soil to plant in. Trees from other parts of the world are not used to having to spread root systems through clay-based soil and often end up being stunted in their growth cycles when transplanted to this environment.

In some respects, however, this can be advantageous in certain forms of landscape architecture. For example, when we are working to make a small yard look larger than it actually is, smaller tree growth actually work in favor of enlarging an otherwise diminutive lot.

Also, we can always mix the soil with other soil types to accommodate non-native species. Or, even better, we can simply work with trees like Magnolias, Oak, and Pine which already proliferate the Houston landscape and have evolved over time to thrive in this particular climate and soil content.

How well does this soil type work for outdoor architecture?
"Stabilized" clay provides good support for footing and piers which are required for almost all outdoor structures. These are especially needed in custom swimming pool construction. Because clay is an expansive soil, it absorbs water and expands in a way that can raise or lower a pool. We have to install piers under the pool that go deeper into the earth—into the stabilized clay itself—to keep the pool stable.