CH,
My dry creek bed look sa lot like SandyKK's. I built mine last weekend.

I built mine for water drianage as well just in case of a large storm. I dug about a foot down, put in a 4" perforated pipe, covered with pea gravel, and then used cibolo rock on top of that. Looks a lot like SandyKK's.

For plants, I built a couple beds, and used native plants that like shade. Ferns work well.

We built a REALLY BIG stream bed for a natural runoff on our property. We lined it with landscape fabric (to try to cut down on weeds) then put in a LARGE assortment of rock.....from boulders to gravel. It looks very natural. (Plants that are native to your property will give it a more natural look - unless, of course, you are going with a more formal look - then I suppose plants that would like a wet location would look the best) Will try to post photos.

Thanks Everyone

Sandy your garden is beautiful! - This reminds me of my side garden in the shade - I think I need to add more rocks! Thanks for the pic. Thanks Zonetrap - sounds nice! Tressa can't wait to see the pics.

I have been wanting to put in a dry stream bed as a border to a garden bed and came up with this link in doing a search. For those of you that already have them, are they messy and hard to keep clean? Do you also have grass growing up in the rocks?

I'd love to see pictures, as we're doing that for drainage in AZ and I need advice, how wide to dig, how deep to dig and what to plant on the edges to make it look natural