Rewilding My Lot

At more or less the lowest point in the back yard, I dug a shallow hollow, or swale, to temporarily capture water during heavy rainfall. I would rather have water sink into the ground than run off the property and into the street.

I still haven’t decided whether this will be a permanent feature of the garden, or whether I will later convert it to a rain garden or ecosystem pond. But for now, it is serving its intended purpose. For instance, in a recent week when we had 3 inches of rain in 3 days, almost the only standing water was in the swale until it eventually soaked away. However, there was still an area between the swale and the fence where water collected as an overflow when the swale was full.

So one recent project was to dig the swale a few inches deeper. That generated several buckets of soil, which I used to continue the project of leveling the ground in front of and beside the house. (Turf throughout this development was poorly laid and everyone here has uneven lawns.) Before I next mow, though, I will need to pick up the smaller stones that slipped though my initial sorting process.

However, then after a night with 2 inches of rain (for which I am grateful — our local water systems are still drought-depleted), there is still standing water outside the swale (picture below). So there may still be work to be done in accommodating that, either by more deepening or extension of the swale, or embracing the fact that there is one area by the fence that will sometimes have standing water (which might affect the choice of plants there). Everywhere else in the garden is puddle-free.