Geogrid in action — retaining leaves for flower bed insulation?

By Robert Koerner

Jonathan Rabe is a landscape gardener with the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board’s River District. When he and coworker, Rochelle Rau, were preparing to protect a dozen tulip beds from the forces of an oncoming Minnesota winter last fall, they hit upon a new application for geogrids.

“I knew we had some [geogrid] scraps left over from a job we had done repairing pathways and roads in the summer,” he said.

So Rabe and Rau grabbed the grid and went to work gathering the fallen leaves and placing them over the flower beds on the parkways and boulevards in northeast Minneapolis. Then they employed their ingenious new geosynthetic application to cover the leaves, keeping the leaves — and the grid — in place using sod staples.

Any other uses for leftover geogrid, Jon? “Yeah, I was thinking, in the spring maybe we could make a trellis or pergola with it.”

To paraphrase the Sundance Kid: “You just keep thinking, Jon, that’s what you’re good at!”