Slope & Erosion Control in Nashville, TN

Slope and erosion control is about buying time on bare ground around Nashville. Grass roots will eventually hold a slope together, but it takes weeks to months for them to get there, and a single heavy storm can carve a bank into gullies before then. Our erosion control services cover that gap with hydromulch, erosion control blankets, straw blankets and bonded fiber matrix, chosen by how steep the ground is and how much water crosses it. We work on residential hillsides, cut banks behind new houses, drainage swales, roadside ditches and the slopes around commercial pads and detention areas.

Why Nashville slopes wash

The city sits where the Nashville Basin meets the Highland Rim, and elevations inside Nashville range from about 385 feet at the Cumberland River to 1,163 feet at Radnor Lake. That means plenty of sloped lots. The airport's 1991 to 2020 normals show about 50.5 inches of precipitation a year, with the wettest months from February through July and May on top. Spring and fall bring severe thunderstorms and flash flooding. Put that rain on a freshly cut bank of clay subsoil and it runs off fast. Clay particles are fine enough to stay suspended, so muddy water leaves the yard and heads for the street, a storm inlet or the nearest creek.

Matching the method to the slope

• Hydromulch (hydro mulching). Standard wood or paper fiber mulch sprayed with seed. Good for gentle to moderate slopes and the starting point on most lawns.
• Heavier mulch with tackifier. More fiber per acre and extra binder for steeper ground that still sees sheet flow, not channel flow.
• Bonded fiber matrix. A sprayed mulch that bonds into a continuous blanket-like layer when it dries. It holds on slopes where standard mulch would slide, and it goes on with the same truck.
• Erosion control blankets. Rolled blankets of straw, coir, or a straw-coconut mix, staked over seeded soil. These go in swales, ditches and the steepest banks, where water concentrates and a sprayed product would wash out.

On many jobs we use two or three of these on the same property: mulch on the yard, blankets in the swale, and heavier mulch on the bank between.

Swales, ditches and downspouts

Most erosion we are called about is not a whole hillside failing. It is a downspout discharging onto bare dirt, a swale between two houses carrying a neighborhood's runoff, or a roadside ditch cutting deeper every storm. Those spots need the water slowed and the channel lined. Blankets staked along the flow line, sometimes with a little regrading first to spread the flow out, usually fix it. If a channel needs rock or a pipe, we say so.

Metro rules and steep fill

Metro Water Services' grading permit guidance for Davidson County lists, among the conditions for skipping a permit, no fill placed on ground steeper than 5 horizontal to 1 vertical and no final slopes steeper than 1 vertical to 3 horizontal, unless calculations justify stabilization measures for steeper slopes. Bare areas are also expected to be stabilized within 15 days. If your project is near those limits, we will tell you before anything is disturbed.

When to call us

Call when you see rills or gullies forming, mulch or seed collecting at the bottom of the yard, muddy water leaving the property after rain, or a bank behind a new house that has never grown grass. The earlier we catch it, the smaller the fix. Erosion control contractors are often called after the soil is gone; it is cheaper to call before. Get a free estimate