In article , Janet Price
wrote:

I have heavy clay soil with several soggy areas and am looking for an
inexpensive way to eliminate or reduce them.

My yard generally slopes down from right to left and from back to front
with the house set higher so I've had no water leakage in the basement.
But the yard's not even and there are small ridges and dips here
and there. At present I have several areas in which there's an inch or
so of standing water. From past experience, I know it may take a month
or so for them to dry up and if we have a wet summer, some of them may
remain soggy for most of the summer.

For the past few days I've dug a few holes 4 or 5 inches deep in the
middle of some of the spots and have been scooping water out of
them--probably 50 gallons so far. In one spot, digging a small trench
over a slight hill drained a bit. I've thought of filling the holes in
with large gravel instead of the clay that was there. Anyone have any
other suggestions? Can I make a pond/bog and collect some of the water
there?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Janet

A possibility: Landscape "hills" that will remain dry, alongside an
excavated area that will accumulate the water, with an eye to planting
water irises & other hardy bog plants. If you end up with a natural
year-round bog area you can plant pure bog plants of all kinds. But if you
end up with a seasonally boggy area that is completely dry by summer, then
you can plant all sorts of prairie plants that love a
now-it's-wet/then-it's-dry environment, such as blue-eyed grass or
camassia or zephyranthes (zephyr lilies). Many other prairie plants (&
"torrent bed plants" which are plants that live in seasonal river beds
that completely dry up in summer) are marketed as pond marginals by
aquatic plant specialists, & gardeners wonder why they don't thrive in
their ponds, but they do thrive if they have extremely wet springs
followed by dry summers.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/