A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion Landscape trials and triumphs Flower bed is too wet, I mean it is a swamp, HELP

Our backyard is slightly sloping toward the house. Almost the whole thing is grass. The back of the house has a large brick patio from one end the the other end about 800 square feet and on the one side I built a flower garden where I didn't want to deal with grass too close to the fence. It is level with the patio, surrounded by large blocks of stone, maybe they are made out of concrete or something similar. I dug the bed out as deep as I could manage with all the clay and rocks and I didn't want to go lower than the blocks that surround it, thinking that I didn't want water to sit in the bottom. It is like a large container. I followed the slope and made sure there was drainage out of the "box". I filled it with garden soil which was I think too soft and porous and I planted flowers which seemed to do well all the way last summer. At the end of the summer we continued the brick patio to the back door, with stone steps and over the winter we had a large amount of snow on it. When it melted it turned into ice, all the way to the back door. Now that the snow and ice is melting, all that water is still sitting in it and it looks like it has nowhere to go. I am worried that the rose and the butterfly bush are going to rot. How can I fix this flower bed so that it isn't just a collector for water?
My husband is planning to remove all the dirt and put drainage rocks on the bottom to raise the bottom level, but other than that what else can we do to encourage the water to drain better? I can post a picture if that helps.

A picture may help. But not necessarily. The stones underneath may help a little. But it sounds like you are going to need even more drainage than the gravel bed will provide.
Is this bed/swamp in the lowest part of your yard? And the accumulated snow and ice from your patio drains onto it? And is the fence on the far side of this planter/swamp the end of your property and beyond is a neighbor's?
"I followed the slope and made sure there was drainage out of the "box"." This sounds like you had the right idea. Is it not working? Is there separation between these blocks of stone or concrete that line the bed?
I'm thinking you may need a gravel 'leach field' beyond the bed so the water has somewhere to go. If there is any space for it, that is.
Another alternative would be to create a bed with an actual hill in the middle or at some point in it to further move the water along in the direction you want it to go. Other alternatives that come to mind might be a focal point of a stream bed meandering through your bed. It can be a dry stream bed for looks but have a purpose during your wetter season moving water along in the direction you want it to go. Or combine both of the above.
Better than a photo would be a bit of a plot drawing or sketch, I think.

Technically this isn't the lowest spot of the yard. It continues to slope toward the front. You can't really see it on the picture but on the side closest to the house there are steps made out of the same stones as the perimeter of the patio and the flower bed. It is meant to support a pergola that we plan to build this year. (the neighbor built a swimming pool and it turned out to be raised so high because of the slope and that they had to keep it level that when they are walking around the pool we can see them down to their waist and they can see into our house and yard. We have no privacy this way so I want to put plants into the bed that will grow tall fast and hanging baskets on the pergola's top to block their view. plus all the way to the back beside that fence but that will be in my other post.)

We continued the same bricks all the way to the back door between the neighbor and our house. The large stone edging is right in between in the middle and the neighbor wants to lay the brick the same way as we did so he doesn't have to deal with the grass on that 4 square feet of patch and we will have a more open feel when it will be unified on both sides. That is where they have the entrance to the pool on their backyard and all the guests use that side even though the other end is wider. For some reason they like to come through between the 2 houses on the 3 foot wide path, go figure. You can actually see how narrow and dark the space is between the 2 houses. We plan to use the back side here for the garbage cans and the main entrance to the backyard is on the other side of the house.

Anyway not only does the snow from the patio collect here but the snow that was blown there by the wind, also my husband shoveled snow on this spot when the kids were outside playing in the winter. There is about a foot wide strip left between the stones and the neighbor's fence where I killed the grass and covered it with rocks that I collected from the back of this development. (They are still building houses behind us and every once in a while I take a walk with the kids and with the wheelbarrow LOL).

You know maybe the space between the stones isn't enough, now that you are asking. When we got a huge rain storm after the bed was done, the soil and some screening was starting to wash out at the corner where there was a space so my husband filled it with concrete and the soils stopped running out. Maybe that was the main point of drainage and the bottom of the bed isn't really draining that well. Obviously now the water is literally standing in it and it is a tub of swamp but the sun is soaking is up for now. Last year I noticed that when my kids ran through the bed they sunk in the soil up to their ankles. So the soil is too porous too. I think we need a different kind of drainage with pipes under the soil.
Here is a picture
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and thanks for your response.

I'm thinking you might be right in your idea of using pipes for run off. That is actually a cheap fix because pvc would work well. Drill some holes in it for collecting water. Adding that gravel around it under there would help keep those holes clear. And then keep the water moving downhill. That is the leach field effect I was talking about.
And up to their ankles does sound a little too fluffy to me too.

I have the same problem as you do, pookiebear, except the water in my holes have turned to ice, and have begun to melt again. What I've done was take an ice pick and break the ice into pieces (the bottom of the hole was still frozen earth) and I use sort of spooned the pieces of ice out. The holes I had intended to plant daylilies, but thankfully I didn't! The bad draining parts of my garden that I planted mint in is actually done not bad. It helps to control the mint spreading too. One thing also that I did when the first year I dug my beds was to plant giant sunflowers (or castor beans or anything with a large root system) so that the soil was loosened further than I wanted to dig. This help quite a bit with drainage issues that I had.

pipe is good idea too. Tina, do you have to put the pipe at the bottom of the hole where the water collects? I noticed the plot is surrounded by brick, is it possible to dig up the plants, add another round of bricks (same sort) on top of the existing one (the large gray ones)and create a raised bed? Raised beds usually have quite good drainage and is often recommended for poorly drained areas.

mint is a great idea and takes hold quickly and spreads just as fast. Sunflowers will look pretty along that fence line too.

Pookiebear had said that they had had drainage between those blocks but it got clogged with whatever after they decided to try to stop the soil from running out. I'm thinking those block are not concreted in? In that case it would be a matter of running pvc pipes with holes drilled in its entire length in the bottom of the planter and out the downhill side. I would surround the pipes with gravel for better runoff. If the block are set in concrete you can actually dig a hole under it to run the pipes through. And yes, Kenny. I would suggest two pipes at the bottom of that planter the complete length and beyond to between the houses. With a gravel leach field at the end too. If possible.
Raising the bed without improving the current drainage problem could make a deeper swamp. Or at least still too much water where it currently is and too much for the roots of most things.
The drilled pipes are used all over California hillsides (horizontally) to keep the water moving and not making mud for slides.

Yes the stones are not cemented. We dug down about 2 feet and put about a foot deep drainage rocks then tamped it down and put the rocks on the top for the edge. It is about 6 inches tall and only one row. They are about 300 lbs each. They are still there level and not moving with the earth heaving and that is what we wanted.

it will be a challenge to run the pipe between the houses because there is already a finished brick ground surrounded by these 300Lb rocks all the way to the corner of the house. Plus the stairs are the same rocks between the bed and the brick path.

I will do the pipe solution when it warms up a bit. The last snow on it is just melting now.

Another idea I have now is what if I scoop out all the dirt and fill it with rocks and make a rock garden, a bit elevated in the middle with a little mound. Don't laugh (rock garden in a wet swamp spot LOL), I am thinking the water would not sit on the top of the rocks and plants on rock gardens don't need a lot of dirt, they don't grow very deep roots. I made a little test rock garden on the other side and I like the way it looks with all the plants spread out. I could cheat with other plants and hide the roots in pots under the top level of the rocks so I could still have some taller plants that don't sit in water.
Does it sound doable or am I flying off the handle here? thanks

The rock garden will work and kind of what I was getting at when I posted this to begin with:
"Another alternative would be to create a bed with an actual hill in the middle or at some point in it to further move the water along in the direction you want it to go. Other alternatives that come to mind might be a focal point of a stream bed meandering through your bed. It can be a dry stream bed for looks but have a purpose during your wetter season moving water along in the direction you want it to go. Or combine both of the above."
No matter what you do, you still want to try to keep the areas between your blocks as unclogged as possible for drainage on the downhill side.
And pots sunken have an added advantage of being able to be brought in out of the freeze if you want.

We lived in California when I was little and I remember having something called ice plant in our back yard because behind our house was what we called "the gully" and I remember people talking about the erosion. We, the children however, loved to play in "the gully", which I'm sure if my children were in "the gully" I'd be having a fit.

Oh Tina I imagined some Japanese rock garden when you wrote dry stream and I thought it would have to be on a larger scale not in my little box. I didn't get it until now. Thanks for the response. I know what to do now. Yeah, I can't get away with not fixing the drainage problem or the lack of it. But I am excited to start as soon as it warms up.