Engineered Soil Solutions
Built to Your Spec

Custom engineered soil blends for bioretention basins, urban tree pits, and stormwater management. Specified by landscape architects and civil engineers across Georgia for nearly 30 years.

Bio-Retention/Rain Garden Engineered Soil

Bioretention areas, also known as Raingardens, are shallow stormwater basins or landscaped areas that utilize bio retention soil and vegetation to capture and treat stormwater runoff. The fundamental purpose of rain gardens is to route stormwater through functional landscapes that store, infiltrate, evaporate, filter, and slow the velocity of stormwater runoff, reducing peak flows, volumes, and pollutants.

Rain gardens are attractive as stormwater Best Management Practices (BMP's) because they improve environmental quality while continuing to meet landscape requirements. Functional soil and landscape systems are critical to the overall performance of raingardens. Engineered soils in these projects play an important role in addition to providing the media for the plant palette. One significant function of the soil is water storage — storage of water in the soil retains water on-site for infiltration and use by soil microorganisms and plant life, which also reduces surface runoff and erosion. Other important functions of the soil are the cleansing of water and the binding of chemicals that, on many occasions, become water pollutants. Finally, successful plantings increase the urban forest, reduce the urban heat island effect, improve air quality, and provide a more aesthetically pleasing and sustainable environment.

Rain gardens can have many different designs and be installed in many different locations — for example, the edge of roads, adjacent to gutters and downspouts, in a corner of a lawn, or in the medians of parking lots. As a trusted structural soil and engineered soil supplier in Georgia, ERTH Products engineers bio retention soil mixes to meet the specific infiltration, water storage, and filtration requirements your raingarden or bioretention project demands.

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ERTH-HydRocks Structural Firelane Engineered Soil Mix

ERTH Products' HydRocks structural soil is an engineered soil mix designed to provide the structural integrity needed to support emergency vehicles while maintaining the biological and horticultural properties that create a sustainable landscape. HydRocks—the same material used in lightweight concrete—delivers the structural strength in the soil mix, while a special blend of clay and ERTH Food provides the microbes and nutrients to create a living soil capable of breaking down contaminants, cycling nutrients, and feeding the landscape. Available for bio retention soil and commercial projects throughout Georgia, this is a dual-purpose solution that earns its place on every development spec sheet.

Use for:

Previous green fire lanes and overflow parking areas in commercial developments.

Specification Code:

2.0 & 2.5

Green Benefits:

Retains water on site, reduces urban heat island effect, helps break down contaminants that would otherwise wash down gutters, provides a recreation area and a nature habitat.

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CU-Structural Soil Mix

CU-Structural Soil Mix is a patented mix developed by Cornell University and licensed to producers by Amereq, Inc.—the most widely used and proven structural soil for trees on the market today. The mix combines crushed angular stone, Gelscape Tackifier, and a clay loam soil. The affordability and availability of crushed stone make it ideal for on-grade conditions with no weight constraints.

ERTH Products is a licensed CU structural soil supplier in the State of Georgia—one of a select number of producers authorized to manufacture and supply this specification. The cu structural soil specification delivers a precise stone size, a precise soil mixture, and Gelscape Hydrogel to adhere the soil to the stone, resulting in an engineered soil that provides stability, air space, and water and nutrient-holding capacity, helping ensure a sustainable landscape for the life of the project.

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ERTH-HydRocks Structural Soil

ERTH-HydRocks Structural Soil is a structural soil mix designed to solve the conflict between highly compacted soils under pavement in urban environments and trees whose roots are unable to grow beyond the confines of a tree pit.

This structural soil for trees can be compacted to legal density to ensure pavement integrity while still possessing the physical and organic properties vital for root growth. For project teams evaluating engineered soil cost, ERTH-HydRocks Structural Soil delivers long-term value by extending tree life and reducing the pavement maintenance costs driven by surface root intrusion.

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Bulk Compost Near Me - Find an ERTH Distributor

ERTH Products are available through trusted distributors and bulk yards across Georgia and the Southeast.

What Our Customers Are Saying

From bioretention to structural support, our engineered mixes are tailored for performance and compliance.

At Heritage Landscape Services, Inc. – Gilbert, SC
Hagins Landscape Nursery, Inc. – Greenville, SC
“I have used ERTH Food® for six years as a soil amendment and as a mulch in annual color beds. With regular use, I have seen an overall improvement in the quality of the soil. Specifically, I have seen better water retention and a reduction in the occurrence of disease.

“ERTH Food® is a great substitute for mulch. It has a good color and texture and does not wash or blow away as do some other mulch products. Far less disease appears in our flowerbeds, which reduces our chemical use and produces more vibrant colors. ERTH Food® is a great product."

Owen Mattis

Liam Donovan

"At Heritage Landscape Services, Inc. – Gilbert, SC At Heritage Landscape, Inc., we have been using ERTH Food® for many years and are very pleased with it. It is a product that we can continue to use throughout the growing season to refresh the look of our beds without changing the beds’ appearance. It has a unique consistency in color and texture that continues the flow into other areas of the bed. ERTH Food® makes a perfect blend to the property, while it gives a fresh look without causing too much contrast. It never fails that, while we are planting our beds, a passer-by will stop to ask what we are mulching our beds with. They comment on how good it looks and ask for the name of a local place where they too can purchase ERTH Food®.
“We find, however, that ERTH Food® provides more than just aesthetics to our beds. It gives our beds a good barrier against weeds, and we’ve found that it also creates a moisture barrier that allows moisture to stay in the ground longer than any other mulch we have tried. At the end of a growing season, we will pull the old flowers and till the existing ERTH Food® into the soil; this provides an excellent source of organic matter that most of our beds need because of either the high clay or sand composite. The bags are an easy-to-handle size, which makes transportation to the beds easy. ERTH Food® is a great product for anyone wanting to achieve that extra-professional look for their beds, and it is ideal for flower bed enhancement."

John Bettis

Heritage Landscape, Inc.

"Riverbanks Zoo & Botanical Garden – Columbia, SC
“At Riverbanks Zoo and Botanical Garden, we have been using ERTH Food® for a number of years. While many people use it as a soil conditioner, we use it as a mulch for our beds. We must get hundreds of questions about ERTH Food® every year; people are intrigued about the peanut shells.
“One thing that is important to me when purchasing mulch is to ensure that it is weed-free. We’ve never had a problem with weedy ERTH Food®. ERTH Food® is a unique and useful product, and, most of all, it looks great as a mulch.”"

Andy Cabe

Riverbanks Zoo and Botanical Garden
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FAQs

All You Need to Know

01
What is engineered soil and how is it different from regular topsoil or fill dirt?

Engineered soil is a purpose-built blend formulated to meet specific performance requirements, infiltration rate, structural load capacity, organic content, or plant-specific nutrition. Standard topsoil and fill dirt are extracted materials with inconsistent properties. Engineered soils are manufactured to spec and tested for performance, making them the right choice for commercial, municipal, and technically demanding landscape applications.

02
What types of engineered soil blends does ERTH Products offer in Georgia?

ERTH Products offers bio retention soil for stormwater and rain garden applications, structural soil (ERTH-HydRocks and CU-Structural Soil Mix) for urban tree pits and paved surface installations, and custom engineered soil mix blends for unique project requirements. All blends available in bulk throughout Georgia and the Southeast.

03
What projects are ERTH Products' engineered soils best suited for, residential, commercial, or municipal?

Primarily commercial and municipal. Our engineered soils are most commonly specified for commercial developments, municipal streetscapes, highway projects, parks, and infrastructure with stormwater management requirements. We work directly with landscape architects, civil engineers, and grading contractors to meet project specifications.

04
Can engineered soil be used for rooftop gardens, green roofs, or urban landscaping applications?

Yes. ERTH Products has supplied engineered soil mix blends for rooftop and elevated deck applications where weight limitations require a lightweight mix that still supports plant growth. Contact our team with your loading specs.

05
Do engineered soils from ERTH Products comply with Georgia DOT or municipal stormwater regulations?

Our structural soil products are engineered to meet load-bearing specifications used in Georgia DOT and municipal streetscape projects. Our bioretention soil is formulated to comply with Georgia EPD stormwater requirements. Spec sheets available on request.

06
How do I determine which engineered soil blend is right for my specific project?

Contact our team with your project details—application type, site constraints, and any engineer-specified performance requirements. We'll review your specs and recommend the right blend, or work with you to engineer a custom solution. This is exactly the kind of conversation we do best.