Hi all, new to the forum and pretty new to
permaculture in general. I found myself reading and watching videos about
permaculture by way of my drainage issue in our large back
yard. I'm hoping for a little
feed back on options.
Here's a picture of the yard, the problem area is circled in red. The whole yard is about an acre and fully fenced.
In case this may help, this is a little video of my puppy digging in the soil around a cherry tree I planted - I brought the tree over from the old house and when I planted it I realized the soil was very sandy without much organic material in it. Then when the rain came, well....
video of wet sandy soil
The background: we bought this house on 4 acres last summer. Our springs are pretty wet and the area I circled holds the
water and you can't walk the area without rain
boots. This is the area I wanted to plant an orchard or food forrest, so drainage will be pretty important. There is a lot of hardpan in this area, as reported by the neighbors. This yard is not naturally flat but a previous owner brought in a bunch of sandy top soil to make it level. So when you put a shovel to this area you pull up sopping wet sand and a puddle of standing water is left in the hole. Of course after a few weeks of sun it dries up reasonably well but we get quite a bit of rain in western WA.
I realize a
swale may be possible but I admit I'm leery of mosquitos. It's still damp out and the mosquitos are going nuts right now. I'd hate to give them permission to hunker down in my back yard. Are there any other options besides putting in french drains? Your
experience and thoughts are appreciated.
