Jakki, I'm so sorry about your gardens. You must be so sad. The weather this year seems to have been about extremes - floods and droughts. Here in Minnesota, many of our lakes were very low. Unusual October rains helped quite a bit though.

Is there any way you can build some terraces that might slow the runoff?

Thanks for the holiday wishes.

Jakki how heartbreaking. Are you sure all of those are really gone? Hopefully what is dormant will come back in the spring and pleasantly surprise you. This has been a really tough year weatherwise in the northeast, too much rain with no let-up. Lets hope for a better gardening season next year.

I like Lois's idea about the terraces, or even some large rocks to hold the soil in. Don has good posts on moving stone.

I'm so sorry to learn about your losses, and I join in the hopes that your plants will come back in the spring.

You might consider a rain garden (or gardens) to absorb and filter some of the run-off. It's more work to do a rain garden when you have clay soils, but numerous articles with illustrations come up when you search using the terms "rain garden clay soil." And please, please, send some of that excess precipitation back to the upper midwest where our summers are so darn dry lately!

Thank you for your thoughts!

I'd love to make rain gardens, but my husband is absolutely adament that I cannot dig up any more lawn! I am working on him to let me add hostas to the slope, which is, in places, very steep.

Because of my back, I can no longer mow any lawn on a slope, Jim complains about his hips, I think a hosta bank would be superb! I was allowed a test area - I hope that during the winter I can persuade him to see how valuable the new beds would be.

I am going to try building up areas in the wooded area, surrounded by rocks - I think this will help. I've been building cold compost piles, so I will have organic matter to fill the beds.

I did save about 24 hostas from the wooded area - they were in a sorry state due to the conditions. They are in a nice raised bed now, over-wintering!

I have my fingers crossed that plants and bulbs will come back, but I don't have much hope to be honest. I've never seen anything like my garden. My heart goes out to anyone who suffers flooding. I can't imagine the horror.

I'll be sure to do a rain dance to send all this water out to all those who need it - once this torrential rain we're having today ends!

Jakki

I have similar problem. My neighbor and mine lots are lowest on the block and both of our gardens get flooded regularly. So my neighbor is building rain garden at her lowest point- slowly filling it in and increasing each year and I have a pond with dry stream bed. Pond has ability to collect overflowing water and direct it in dry stream which becomes a wet stream...
You have to choose well what you want to grow in the areas that get flooded but many plants love it- I have patches of primulas that are absolutely stunning and variety of other plants, shrubs, including bunch of hostas. My flowerbeds are raised and have pretty good drainage for about a foot
Consider it a blessing in disguise, now you have reasons to change things around...
there are also so drain tiles possibilities, rain barrels to consider