Re: shade/bog gardening

Melody,
Ooops, apologies here too.  I answered too soon too!
Kitty
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Melody" <mhobertm@excite.com>
To: <gardenchat@hort.net>
Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 3:32 AM
Subject: Re: [CHAT] shade/bog gardening


> Wow, Marge! That is an incredible amount of info...gonna print it off
> and study it carefully. You are the second person to mention dry wells
> and I guess I must have misunderstood Kitty...it sounds like it is
> actually filled to the top and grated over so small children/animals
> wouldn't be a real problem?? Guess I will look into this more...thanks
> and my apologies to Kitty!
>
>
>
> Melody, IA (Z 5/4)
>
> "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."
> --Albert Einstein
>
>  --- On Fri 04/23, Marge Talt < mtalt@hort.net > wrote:
> From: Marge Talt [mailto: mtalt@hort.net]
> To: gardenchat@hort.net
> Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2004 16:34:49 -0400
> Subject: Re: [CHAT] shade/bog  gardening
>
> Well, Melody, if lilacs are growing in this area, it means
> it<br>actually has decent drainage as they are not plants that
> will<br>tolerate wet feet for very long.<br><br>It appears that the
> major problem is that the water is going on down<br>to his neighbor's
> yard...<br><br>My experience with water in really heavy downpours is
> that once it<br>fills up an area, it will overflow that area and
> continue on down<br>hill. This is what happens to my 'bog' garden -
> really a damp garden<br>- that is built over the 6" PVC flexible pipe
> that picks up water<br>from several downspouts. Once enough water has
> fallen to fill all<br>available air space in the garden, water collects
> on the surface of<br>the garden - basically in the lower spots there -
> and then, when that<br>fills up past the lowest point of the edge, it
> drains out and flows<br>down the path around the garden and on down my
> hill to a drainage<br>swale that eventually ends up in a creek about 100
> feet on down hill.<br><br>So, while creating an artificial 'bog' at the
> end of a drain pipe is<br>perfectly possible and in normal rains will
> absorb most all of the<br>water without overspill AND will keep the soil
> in that garden damp<br>all year around, it will NOT handle all the water
> from a really heavy<br>and/or sustained downpour. This means that water
> under those circs<br>will still travel into the neighbor's
> garden.<br><br>If a section of the neighbor's garden floods during heavy
> rains, that<br>means to me that the grades in that garden are not
> allowing water to<br>drain away easily - there has to be some depression
> there that holds<br>water until it reaches the top before it can drain
> out and finds a<br>way further downhill. Unless the drainage in the
> neighbor's garden<br>is corrected, this will always happen in a gully
> washer, particularly<br>if your friend is collecting water from his
> property in one spot<br>adjoining a lower grade at the neighbor's
> property...water always<br>goes downhill and will find the easiest way
> to do this.<br><br>Your friend can bui
>
> ld a dry well to collect water from his<br>downspouts. This may be more
> effective in preventing flooding of his<br>neighbor's yard but, again,
> in a major, sustained heavy rain, it, too<br>might overflow.<br><br>The
> difference is that a drywell is filled with stones to aid in
> the<br>water draining out where a bog garden is lined in plastic to keep
> it<br>in:-)<br><br>If you decide to build a bog garden, you do not need
> a block wall;<br>just dig a depression about 15" deep and line it with
> plastic. Mine<br>took 2 sheets; I just overlapped the joint. Water will
> find its way<br>out at the joint, but that's OK, enough is kept in to
> keep the soil<br>moist and you do want some drainage so it doesn't get
> stagnant. You<br>then need something to conceal the plastic at the edge;
> I used logs<br>as I had a major quantity of them, but rocks or flagstone
> would do<br>the trick. If you use plain old PVC plastic sheet (6 mil at
> least)<br>you have to make sure it is not exposed to sunlight as it
> degrades<br>quickly; breaks up in little bits. If it's totally covered
> in soil<br>it will last a long time.<br><br>The only harm building a bog
> would do the lilacs would be damage to<br>their roots when digging the
> hole.<br><br>Depending on the amount of light / sun reaching the
> location, there<br>are hundreds of plants that love continually moist to
> wet<br>soil....candelabra primroses, carex, astilbes, rushes, Japanese
> iris,<br>Siberian iris, Chelone, Veratrum, Lobelia are a few in my
> 'damp'<br>garden.<br><br>As much as I love my damp garden and wish it
> were larger, it is not<br>exactly a low maintenance item, so if your
> friend is trying to move<br>that garden into low maintenance, seems to
> me he should concentrate<br>on the dry well and stopping as much
> flooding of his neighbor's<br>garden as possible and not in creating a
> new type of garden to<br>maintain...<br><br>If his roof drain is running
> across the garden, maybe it passes a<br>spot where not much is growing
> and a dry well could be dug without a<br>lot of problems - or this co
>
> ul
> d happen fairly close to the house; far<br>enough away so water doesn't
> go toward the foundation, tho' - then<br>the pipe would terminate at
> that point instead of where it now does. <br>This also means that any
> overflow would be absorbed more by his<br>property before it hit his
> neighbor's property.<br><br>Hard to tell what size dry well would be
> needed without seeing the<br>situation, but I'd imagine it would need to
> be at least 3' in<br>diameter and about that deep to contain a lot of
> water. This would<br>be filled with stones of varying size from gravel
> to larger and the<br>pipe terminated there. The top needs some kind of
> silt cloth to stop<br>it silting up fast and that could be topped with
> smaller gravel and<br>planted or a grate put on it; depends on what and
> where, etc. I also<br>used perforated drain pipe so that some of the
> water would leak out<br>on the way down hill - just waters more land
> while containing the<br>major flow. <br><br>When you concentrate water
> flow, you always get a larger amount at<br>the spill end than if it
> simply travels over land naturally.<br><br>Being on the side of a hill,
> drainage and where water goes and what<br>it does while it's doing that
> are a continual education and challenge<br>for me. Last year, with the
> really heavy rains we had, rain came<br>down our drive so fast that it
> dug a trench about a foot deep in the<br>driveway gravel (3/4" bluestone
> that's been compacted there 14 years)<br>and pushed the gravel it dug
> out down into a border from which I have<br>still to excavate all of it.
> And this despite the fact that I'd<br>already dug a foot deep trench
> along the edge of the drive to direct<br>the flow during heavy rain; the
> water ignored that one and made<br>another to suit itself! My trench
> works fine during normal rains. <br>It took half of my pea gravel walk -
> down to and including the stone<br>dust under it and some of the larger
> rocks I'd put under that! - down<br>the hill...gotta solve that little
> problem one of these days; gettin'<br>tired of hauling
>
> that stuff back up hill.<br><br>You really need to simply observe what
> water is doing during heavy<br>downpours a while to figure out what you
> need to do to divert it or<br>otherwise mitigate the force.
> <br><br>Marge Talt, zone 7 Maryland<br>mtalt@hort.net<br>Editor:
> Gardening in
> Shade<br>-----------------------------------------------<br>Current
> Article: Battling
>
Bambi<br>http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/shade_gardening<br>------------
------------------------------------<br>Complete
> Index of Articles by Category and
>
Date<br>http://mtalt.hort.net/article-index.html<br>------------------------
------------------------<br>All
> Suite101.com garden topics :<br>
>
>     http://www.suite101.com/topics.cfm/635<br><br>----------<br>>
>
> From: Melody <mhobertm@excite.com><br>> <br>> Dear all: I need help for
> a friend's yard...It is his mother's<br>house<br>> which now that she
> has retired and moved south, he has<br>> "inherited"...with one giant
> problem...Mom was a huge gardener and<br>he is<br>> not. So now he is
> faced with the upkeep of an extensive shade<br>garden<br>> collection
> that he neither knows nor really cares about, but to<br>keep his<br>>
> mom happy when she visits every so often, he would like to
> do<br>something<br>> with it while simplifying the work. She was really
> into hostas in a<br>big<br>> way and they are everywhere. Also tons and
> tons of lily of the<br>valley<br>> that are spreading like wildfire,
> even where he doesn't want them<br>> (Kitty...who knew? Sorry!) So, I've
> agreed to help him revamp all<br>of<br>> those things, but our biggest
> problem proves to be one of<br>drainage...he<br>> has an area in his
> yard to which he runs a drainage pipe for<br>rainwater<br>> from his
> roof that in heavy rains, runs across his yard and floods<br>his<br>>
> neighbors yard in the corner where the two meet...It's a
> heavily<br>shaded<br>> area that contains mostly a beautiful collection
> of lilac trees, a<br>few<br>> hosta and lily of the valley...would the
> creation of a boggy area<br>there<br>> with cinder block and plastic l
>
> in
> er a) be enough to contain the<br>water so<br>> it doesn't flood the
> neighbors and b) be damaging to the lilacs in<br>any<br>> way? Also,
> what would one put in a boggy area like
>
that?<br><br>---------------------------------------------------------------
------<br>Support
> hort.net -- join the hort.net fund drive!<br>
>
>     http://www.hort.net/funds/<br><br>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com
> The most personalized portal on the Web!
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Support hort.net -- join the hort.net fund drive!
> http://www.hort.net/funds/

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Support hort.net -- join the hort.net fund drive!
http://www.hort.net/funds/
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index