A dry creek bed is easy to build as long as there is a place for the water to go. We routed the downspouts from our front gutters and the overflow from our water feature to drain here. This also catches all of the run off from our meadow. At the bottom of the slope in my garden above the dry creek, we have a rain garden of plants that like full sun and wet feet in winter, yet won't die in our summer. We already had a ditch, so there was very little digging. We used one pallet of river rock that was around $275 last fall. We used permeable landscape fabric underneath to control the weeds. We don't use fabric in flower beds, BTW! It took 3 of us half a day to do this, but that was with our archaeologist son looking through the stone for arrowheads (which he found). My husband and I didn't mind the slow pace! This was created in September 2006, so the plant material is new. Sidebar: The wire edging is a temporary detterent to deer to keep them from trampling the new plants. It's working so far since everything is deer resistant

The OP asks " ... how should I go about doing this." Your property appears to be rather flat. Coupled with close neighbors, things can get sticky. Start by getting someone other than yourself to document the existing grades over all of the project area. Use an engineer, surveyor, LA, or one who has many years of experience. The result should be a contour map with spot elevations also shown. The most important thing is the location where water is crossing the tract boundary. Before starting the design, study the drainage law of your area. Law differs from state to state, but the most common applicaton is the civil law doctrine of drainage. Here I repeat what I said on another thread. Note that part in bold. A good overview can be found at: http://publicworks.co.marion.or.us/engineering/DevEng/drainagelaw.asp "The lower owner must accept water which naturally comes to his land from above, ..." In Arizona: https://www.coconino.az.gov/uploadedFiles/Public_Works/Homeowner_Guide_To_Drainage.pdf "A second drainage law is "The Civil Law Rule of Natural rainage". This rule states that a landowner has the burden of receiving onto his/her land the surface water naturally falling onto and freely flowing onto it from land above it. The rule further states that a landowner has the right to have the surface water falling upon his/her land and naturally flowing onto it to flow freely from it onto lower parcels as it would flow under natural conditions. The key words are "naturally flowing". Any modifications to the surface topography or the drainage ways that cause natural flow to enter or leave a property differently (different peak flow elevations, frequencies and flow locations) can create a liability and put you at risk regarding litigation." Or from: http://web.aces.uiuc.edu/vista/pdf_pubs/DRAINAGE98.PDF "A landowner has no right to obstruct the flow of surface water. The owner of lower land obviously has no right to build a dam, levee, or other artificial structure that will interfere with the drainage of higher land, according to the CIVIL LAW as it is applied in Illinois."

I don't have good luck with greggii either. That red one in the pics is darcyi, which is doing great with water just once a week when watering the new grass. I actually bought one from Flowers by the Sea to have in a pot and they are fairly brittle. That one on the berm is actually a piece I broke off and rooted and it's done that well from starting as a cutting this spring. I've never grown it before but it seems to do great in DFW. I amended that berm with some compost before I planted but that's it, aside from that it's nice black gumbo clay. Really hoping it overwinters but even if it doesn't I'll get another next spring.

Hi, just reading some posts, Cat Rowe, you should post a pic some day, and so should anyone reading this who has made a similar garden area. I was thinking of doing so, but, my area is right on a property line and, I would'nt be able to mow the area on the property line of I put a catch basin area for the runoff :( . It just would be too hard to cut the grass. I wish it was just a tad bit over on either his side (his problem) or my side my nice flowing runoff area. But, maybe next year we won't have all this rain, and there would be no runoff. So maybe that "dry creek bed" can be attained somewhere else, where I can accept that it will always be "dry".