hi, this is my first time posting here. i've been trying to find a diy solution for this and have come across a lot of info on permaculture. i'm kind of new to this but fascinated.the problem is this, we just removed an above ground pool and deck that sat at the bottom of a hill that is wooded. a lot of water runs down this hill and used to run under the bottom of the pool and out the other side. you can actually hear it running like a stream at times. so now we have a huge flat circle of sand at the foot of this hill with the excavated area where the deck was around it. we have heavy clay soil, really heavy. after a lot of pinterest research i was thinking a swale would help but now i'm not sure since water does not drain into the soil very much. i dug a hole in this spot last night bigger than a five gallon bucket and poured in a bucket of water and two hours later it didn't go down at all. then it rained all night and now there are puddles in the sand, which is sitting on clay. maybe a dry stream bed? but exactly where to start and end and what's it leading to. of course i want to start a garden here but must take care of drainage first. then last night me and my husband were watching you tube videos on hugelkultur and we thought that would be an awesome way to make the raised beds we want to put around the circle area left by the pool. we also have a lot of cut up wood from trees that were taken down a few years ago. can we just dig a drainage ditch fill it with gravel cover it with branches and leaves and etc then do a hugelkultur bed right in front of that?
