Have some drain tiles installed

YOu need to put in a french drain, basically it is a trench, that is filled with rocks and slopes away from the area where you want the water to run. It is not that difficult, hire a few teenage boys to help you dig. Then you put rocks over it, and a landscaping fabric and then dirt so you can have grass over the top.

I know all about French drains, but the problem is the water comes from the roof of the shed and also comes down the slope UNDER the shed. There's no way we can get under there to install a French drain without tearing down the shed first. Also, because of the grade of the slope, there's no feasible location to have the drain come out without potentially flooding our back neighbor's yard, which we don't want to do. Their back yard is a continuation of the downhill from our yard. I've thought about getting a huge rain barrel for that corner of the shed, which will certainly eliminate some. But with the rains we've had the past two weeks, that barrel would have been full in about 20 minutes and been no good for the other 4+ straight days of rain we had.

River rock does make a beautiful ladscaping feature. Also you can put in a dispersion trench or a trench, kind of a holding pond under the ground, and cover it over like you do a french drain. Possible put a gutter on the shed, but that is probable not the main problem, the surface water is. You could put a french drain in where the water is, and run it to a different area of the yard, we have a couple of french drains in our yard, and some around our house. We live in Seattle, and have ground water issues along with the rain.

Certain trees are very thirsty. I remember my Dad solving the same problem with trees but it was many years ago; can't remember what type, but a nursery could advise you.

Those hedge plants in the picture were bought to definitely soak up some of the water at the bottom of the hill, and were recommended by the nursery where we purchased them. But the 4-5 days of straight rain made us realize that we might need something more. I've look at the suggestions here - the dispersion trench looks interesting, We did think about gutters on the shed, but we'd still have an issue with runoff from the gutters. The only problem with a french drain is that isn't that kind of drain supposed to dump out the water eventually? The other side of our yard is UPHILL from the section that floods, so I'm not sure a French drain will really work. The flooding is taking place at literally the lowest part of our entire yard. Everything else is uphill from that one spot.

Certain types of plants can help reduce the amount of water that collects there but it isn't the best solution. Have you considered installing gutters and a rain barrel on the shed itself since you say a lot of this is runoff from the roof? That might help reduce the problem a little.

To really address this problem you need to address the slope of the land and the low spot where the water is collecting. It's good that it is running AWAY from the foundation of your home and you don't want to do anything that changes that. However, you could get some free fill dirt often offered at construction sites to begin filling in that low area. Fill dirt is NOT garden soil - usually in my part of the country it's red clay that nothing will grow in unless you do some serious amending with compost. But once you get that area backfilled with enough that the water is going somewhere other than your property, you can add a layer of topsoil or garden soil to cover the fill dirt and that will allow you to plant turf or other plants in that area.

Alternately to building it up - you could also consider digging it out and creating a pond or bog garden there. http://web.extension.illinois.edu/ccdms/yg/070714.html

Jessica - I mentioned in my second post that we briefly considered a rain barrel. However, I just found out that a friend that has two had flooding in her own yard because the water had nowhere else to go once the 2 huge barrels she has got full on the first day of our multi-day rainstorm. I think I've decided to do a drainage test - dig a hole 18-24 inches deep and fill it with water. If it is empty within an hour, we have good drainage - if it's not, then we have major drainage issues because of the clay soil. At that we may bring in fill dirt and have that entire section tilled, mixed, and raised a few inches, which was something my husband mentioned as a possibility, just like you.