Also! I forgot to mention that with our wooded lot, we tend to get a lot of mosquitos. Part of my plan to do a water garden where the water pools is to avoid having a huge puddle of standing water to attract more mosquitos.

I’m not sure if this logic is correct or not... I’m no Gardner, at all. Will speak with the local nursery on this too, but forgot to include the the original post. Thanks again!

It's not logical. Standing water equals mosquitoes no matter how many plants you stick in it.

I had a feeling. We’ll have standing water no matter what, so we’re doing the creek bed so we can hopefully contain the water to certain areas to avoid having a mud pit backyard like we do now. I had a feeling that no matter what we aren’t going to affect the mosquitos! Wishful thinking :)

Some pics of our backyard after a rain - granted was a massive rainfall - over 6 in over the course of 1 day.

Looks like the trees, plants and grasses that will thrive in standing water are already there. You can add more specimen plants for garden interest and your dry creek drainage project may help other parts of the lot we can't see or know the details of. This may be a case where a boardwalk is needed to make fuller use of your swampland possible.

I don't think the creek bed will make a difference in other areas remaining dryer. What will do that will boil down to grade. Higher and sloped areas will dry quicker after a rain. Lower/ sunken areas will not.

I do plan to add 2 garden bridges over the creek bed so kids can easily run from our yard to others without having to run through mud (fingers crossed!)

You’re right, we do have natural things growing, maybe I need to get someone out here to identify some of them so we can add more. We want to add more trees back there to fill in where there are gaps in the winter, mainly evergreens so they stay full year round - hopefully after the creek bed contains all the water we can plant some evergreens!

Maybe some of what’s there already will continue to grow naturally? We aren’t planning to use landscape fabric in the creek bed because we don’t mind if weeds grow!!

Another question - besides consulting a local horticulture expert, should we be consulting with anyone else? We are not planning to change the natural flow of the water, we are following the natural flow but just trying to contain in. So I don’t know if we need to have a surveyor or engineer weigh in before we start? I’m trying to keep costs low, but also want to do it right. From what I’ve read so far - if we’re not trying to reroute the water we should be fine. But, curious what you guys with more experience think!

Yardvaark - Would that mean regrading the lot entirely? As in, having significant amounts of top soil brought in?

Incidentally, the landscaper we hired to install our lawn in the front charged us extra for more top soil, but when I dig in 1 inch to place paver stepping stones I hit rock and clay immediately under the grass. Makes me wonder about the originally excavation as well as the landscaper! (New build 1 yr ago.)

Hello Kate! I have a similar yard and would like to follow. I actually have a drainage ditch on the side that is slowly filling in. The ditch helped prevent flooding. I can't wait to hear feedback from Houzzers on this.

drblount10, We actually had a big basement flood last fall as a result of poor grading around an exposed window... what a disaster. The builder addressed that issue - and I'm happy to say after a 6inch + rainfall yesterday... basement is dry! So we've got the water moving away from the house finally, which was the first huge battle.

Now, I'm hoping that if we can corral rainwater into a creek bed and water garden, it will help keep other areas of the yard from staying wet for so long. Not sure if it will work … I suppose it if it doesn't at least it will be pretty? Ha!

Thank you! Yes - it is a shaded area. There are several puddles and "runs" of water that I can connect into a bit of winding creek from one side of the yard to the other (with some turns around trees to follow the natural pooling.

The challenge here is that this is our backyard, our house sits up higher and the yard around it generally slopes down and to the back. There's another angle at play here too - our home faces north, and our lot also has a slight slope from the west - so slopes down to the south. So in our backyard, we have a general downslope, but also a south slope too - so that back south corner of the lot is where most of the water stays for a long time. We can't really divert it to the road, because the water would have to run uphill - and we'd be pushing water back towards the house.

Yardvaark also commented that a creek bed might not help - I'm wondering if we need to add some crushed stone (as opposed to top soil) to actually get the water in other parts of the yard to run down into the creek? Wonder if that would help? I think I'd definitely need to hire someone to help us with that - I'd be afraid of really messing up our lot if I start trying to DIY that. But if it would help with drainage I'm all for it. Then we could still DIY the creek bed itself.

You might want to investigate rain gardens. These are designed specifically to address water run off regardless of origin and feature a plant selection that will tolerate both seasonal flooding AND dry conditions.