I agree about the gutters if you live in an area with any appreciable rainfall, except perhaps if one lives where the land drops fairly steeply away from the building which yours doesn’t. I have seen fairly attractive gutters in that either they didn’t look like gutters or they were ornamental, such as copper gutters, common in the houses built in the 1920’s where I grew up in the Midwest. Either option is expensive, but the alternative of having some of the water issues created by moisture on a structure is also expensive.

Yikes! You have a more serious issue than stained stone. When you look at the house you should see the bottom of the rock and then a 4-inch concrete pad down to the soil level. The bottom of the rock is called the sill and represents the floor level of the interior. You have soil built up against the house which buries the drop down as well as the sill. Right above the sill there are probably weep holes to allow the house to breathe. Assuming there are weep holes, if your flower bed becomes flooded with water, your walls could begin to fill at the base and you could have water on your flooring. So while I might disagree with gardengal's statement about all houses needing gutters, in your case I agree emphatically. The better solution would be to take out the raised bed that is causing the problem. If you want a raised bed look you could accomplish that by removing soil from the house and building it back up but keeping it below the sill at all costs.

As for cleaning the stone, you could try a pressure washer to take the stains off the stone. The stains might be iron based (rust) and might not come off, but the pressure washer would be my first thought.

Not all houses must have gutters. There are places in San Antonio where the soil dries out and will break the house framing as the cracks spread several inches apart. The houses in one of those areas are expensive and have resorted to putting a soaker hose around the perimeter of the house to keep the soil hydrated.

That little line of rocks won't stop the soil splashing.

It is not just my opinion......most home buiding sites will state the same. Unless one is in a very arid or desert climate like Arizona or New Mexico. Or have very wide overhangs/eaves that will deliver the water at a distance away from the foundation.

Even Frank Lloyd Wright's house and school in the Arizona desert, Taliesin West, has a guttering system. But they are internal gutters designed at the same time as the structure and direct the desert monsoonal rainfall into a series of rills, waterfalls and pools.

Hi, we appreciate the comments! As far as the soil being too high,, we built the house about 20 years ago and the house actually sits on a pretty substantial foundation/footing (non-level lot). The soil does cover most of the underpinning and there is a footing that the stone veneer rests on. The weep holes are about a foot above the soil line. We used to have shrubs in this whole bed and they got overgrown so we removed them last year.

I'm not addressing cleaning the house, but in order to keep future dirt from splashing on it, you need mulch. It could be wood based, or stone. ((Stone is a lot more PITA over the long haul if there are plants involved., especially when any changes are needed. There is huge splashing from rain in general, so a skinny strip of mulch (including the stone) will not work.) I agree with those who said get gutters. Mulch alone will be difficult/impossible to control splashing without them. There are many nice looking gutters/downspouts to choose from. Unless you have exposed rafter tails that you are trying not to cover, gutters will not look bad.

Thanks everyone again for the suggestions. Happy Holidays.

What you have now looks far worse than any gutters I have ever seen. (Well, except the house I saw with neon green gutters.)

I added gutters around my house except for one side of the house that has large-scale gravel and a drainage system. As others have suggested, gutters work great. In this situation, as an alternative, dig a channel in the impact zone the length of the house and build a drainage system that is covered with grating. The channel will have to be on a gradient to take the water someplace else -- you'll have to figure out where to direct the water in a way that won't flood another part of your garden or your neighbor's. Then grow your plants away from the channel in the remaining bed. It will probably cost as much or more than gutters.