Beginner Gardening: Considering building a dry creekbed, 1 by gbirds

gbirds wrote:
Lizzy, your creekbed is gorgeous, but it turns out that one of that scale wouldn't have helped our water issues. Once the landscapers moved our shed and the bobcat started poking around, we discovered that the original creek (graded over by the builders apparently) also has a spring bubbling up right where the shed was. It's not a gusher, so it was just slowly creating a big mud pit. (If only it had been oil instead, we'd be the Clampetts!)

So, what we originally envisioned as this lovely little meandering stone bed turned into a larger-scale restoration of the real creek that used to be here. The neighbors say it's pretty much spot on its original path. The river rocks were by far the most expensive part. Fortunately the landscaper had the boulders on hand and gave us a better deal than the stone yard could. Given the spring and the original creek, the rest of which still runs to the edge of our property, there's no way we could've done this ourselves.

The landscapers finished the job in 4 days, plus did some other stuff (removed 2 treacherous pines from our woods and beautifully finished the area between the driveway and our fence gate). The timing was perfect: We had three days of rain right after they finished. Water ran down the new creek and into the drain like you would not believe. Our yard, for the first time since the drought broke, remained dry enough that I don't need to wear my rubber boots just to step outside. Before, the yard would stay wet and muddy for a week after it rained.

Here's a shot near one end. We're in the process of planting the raised beds that you see covered with pine needles, and the straw mats are seeded with grass and white Dutch clover. (I have a clover yard in the front that's doing spectacular things to the clay soil, not to mention barely ever needs mowing.)

Since this photo, my husband and I built the first of 3 bridges that will cross the creekbed, which is about 100 feet long. It's bigger than I envisioned, but so was the problem!