Goa's monsoon is generous — often too generous for a garden that hasn't been prepared for it. Waterlogging, root rot, and washed-out beds are the most common calls we get between June and September, and almost all of them are preventable with a bit of pre-monsoon work.
1. Check your grading first
Water should move away from the house and away from planting beds. If you're seeing pooling near the foundation or in low corners of the lawn after a heavy rain, that's a grading problem, not a planting problem — and no amount of drainage gravel fixes it long-term.
2. Clear and inspect drains before the first heavy rain
Leaf litter and soil runoff clog French drains and soakaways over the dry season. A ten-minute inspection in May saves a flooded bed in June.
3. Choose planting that can handle wet feet — selectively
Not every plant needs to survive standing water, but the ones in your lowest beds should. We lean on gingers, heliconias, and select palms in monsoon-prone beds, and keep anything drought-loving on raised mounds.
4. Mulch, but not right up against stems
A 2-3 inch mulch layer reduces splash-back and erosion during heavy downpours. Keep it pulled back from stems and trunks to avoid rot.
5. Service irrigation systems before you stop needing them
It sounds counterintuitive to service a drip system right before the rains arrive, but a system left running (or leaking) under monsoon conditions wastes water and can waterlog beds that are already saturated. We turn most residential systems down to manual override for the season.
If your garden struggled last monsoon, it's worth a pre-season site visit — most of the damage we see repeats itself every year because the underlying drainage or grading issue was never addressed.