I once built a bog garden by putting down layers and layers of cardboard into a hole where a large white BOP had been dug out, then filling it completely with Black Cow and organic peat (not peat moss, peat -- look at the garden center for it). You can also use leaves if you can't afford or find organic peat. The cardboard allowed drainage while keeping the mucky stuff in place. I planted bog buttons, water canna and lizard tail in it, and it lived happily there for many years. It was under an oak tree, so leaves fell on it every year too. All you have to do is have more organic matter than sand. That's basically what a bog is.

I knew a guy who bought a truckload of hard pan for his garden. If you could find clay based hard pan, maybe you could excavate an area and fill it with hard pan. Oak leaves should also work, but it would take years to build up enough organic matter. My garden is about 25% to 30% organic matter - mostly due to oak leaves added yearly for many years.

I like DG's method, it provides a way of building up a boggy, puddly area that will either continue to slowly build or eventually revert back to normal conditions. It would also allow the moisture to continue to filter through, but at a much slower rate, allowing the boggy plants to filter out nutrients. Hardpan clay would be a way to go if I intended to have a 'natural' pond in which to have turtles and the like, but I really don't see myself going that route ever. A 'small' koi pond with a couple of turtles is about as far as I will go. I say 'small' because koi need a fair bit of space to grow in healthy conditions. I am far from certain, but I don't think clay is really a local resource, rather I would imagine it is trucked down from GA and SC. I am sure there are some areas in FL that have clay, but I can't imagine it is enough to make gathering and transporting it an efficient process.

We're not exactly sure where we will be moving, but we feel that down near Tavares, Eustis and Mt. Dora will suit us. Depending on just where we end up, we could have conditions very much like what we have now or have a naturally more moist situation.

You can switch soils with me anytime, clay sucks. I used to curse the sandy soil I had in Tampa, now I would give my eyeteeth for it back. We wound up in the middle of a hard-pan clay area, to the East are sand-hills, to the West are sand-hills, and here we sit. At first I thought, wow, no more watching water and nutrients sink down immediately out of sight. Now I know - clay needs amendments because it robs the plants of nutrients, it doesn't drain when it rains a lot and when there isn't enough rain just try to dig a hole for a decent sized plant, go ahead, try.

My sister spent 30 years in the Upcountry of SC trying to add organic matter to her red clay yard to make things grow. Every Christmas and Birthday, her husband would give her bags and bags of compost. They did, after about 15 years, manage to have a pretty nice vegetable garden.