I posted this in the Ponds & Aquatic Plants forum too, but maybe this is a better forum for it. I don't know if this counts as a pond or bog question.

I'm hoping y'all can recommend some plants that might be able to survive in a very challenging situation.

A business near my house has an enormous parking lot. When it rains, (which is often, here near Atlanta, GA, zone 7b) the rain that falls onto this parking lot used to run off and into the basements of nearby houses. This obviously was a bad thing, so the city made them redirect the water to run into what used to be a patch of woods behind my house. They bulldozed the woods first to reshape the land, and put a big ugly concrete wall around it to hold water. Then they sprinkled some law grass seed on the mud and clearly consider the project finished.

Now the view out my back window, which used to be of woods and birds, is of grey wall and mud. Every time it rains, the water gets about 5 feet deep at the deepest part, to mere inches at the shallow end, to just soggy at the highest part. This water subsidies in a day or two, unless it rains again, in which case it stays high. The deepest part always has some large puddles in it (from ruts left by machinery) which have already attracted frogs, with large tadpoles.

The lawn grass seed they sprinkled had no chance of surviving in this situation, but is there anything that would? I saw one cattail in there. I've never seen just one cattail before, but I guess one seed landed in the right place, so that's a start. Any other suggestions? Is there a vine that could cover the wall? Might a tall lotus survive in the puddles at the deepest part? Maybe swamp crabapples and mayhaws at the shallower end?

Of course, it wouldn't be right for me to trespass on this business's property, but if some seeds of the right plants just happened to drift in there by chance, that would be nice. ;-)