Specialty Gardening: drainage layer / PWT question, 1 by monkapotamus

monkapotamus wrote:
Wow. Yippie. Egads! Thank you both for the quick and detailed reply!

The second sketch is the front view. Since it was a quick sketch, I had just copied and pasted and shown the timbers on both sides, but actually, on the left it is a poured concrete wall, with the driveway on the other side of it, so that is why I thought I should slope the bottom only to the right instead of off to both sides. The bottom does slope down toward the lower tier. I can cut or drill through the existing timbers to make a route for the water.. . the foot thick concrete side would be not so easy.

The beds are not huge- 5.5' X 2' wide, and the top of the tallest tier is just over 3'. The timbers and some sickly plants were already in place from the prev. owners. I'm digging out the contents of them now so that a plant could actually survive in there. So far, i've only dug out the center one, since it was completely empty, and I dug about 1' deep.

Would I want it set up like a french drain, with the pipe surrounded by gravel and fabric, or would just the perf pipe with the 'sock' around it, surrounded by the good soil suffice? The beds are shallow enough that the drain alone is going to eat up a lot of room. Do you think it might work to run the pipe along base the front without a gravel surround, and a french drain only on the wood side?

Pic is of what I'm thinking I might do- i tried to be more accurate about the drawing this time