# Question about my house foundation's distance from the dirt **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 6, 2011, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-my-house-foundations-distance-from-the-dirt/587971 "2011-07-06T01:35:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![papergirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/aca169/32.png) [@papergirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/papergirl)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-my-house-foundations-distance-from-the-dirt/587971/1 "2011-07-06T01:35:30Z")
When I was buying my house and had an inspector, he told me I would need to watch the distance between the dirt in the yard and the siding on the house (it has a cement foundation.)…that there needed to be a 6" clearance to prevent or discourage termite infestation. I check the foundations regularly so I haven’t done anything about it so far. But now I want to put in a flower bed along one side of the house. I dug the dirt away from the wall/foundation so there is the required clearance, but…now what? I don’t want to plant flowers that close to the house. Can I just put down a layer of landscaping fabric, or should I backfill it with gravel or something? Even if I don’t get it done this year, I can do it in the fall–I’m only planting annuals, so will be cleaning out the beds later in the year. thanks for any info! k ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-my-house-foundations-distance-from-the-dirt/587971/2 "2011-07-06T02:15:16Z")
lay down the fabric (in a U with some coming up above ground on the ends) the distance you don’t want plants, put landscape rocks on it.