The bottom of our garden flooded with storm Bert (and then again on Tuesday night) and it ripped the surface of one of the bridges off the supports, so we have had to divert the permissive path that runs through my parents garden through the fence into mine so that the neighbours can get to the village without having to walk down the main road, without a pavement...
But the biggest thing that I wasn't expecting was the quantity of water that flowed straight down the slope in the orchard at the top of my "field" and washed a load of the soil out of my veg garden. Looks like I'm going to have to do some landscaping to divert that surface flow in future. Slowly leaning more about my new garden 😁
Its frightening itsn't it. I have well covered soil in my fields as they are under permanent pasture and the fields are flat, but I get a huge volume of soil being washed into my ponds so I can imagine how much that is magnified with a slope. One of the best pieces of advice I have heard about heavy rain in gardens is to get outside during a deluge and watch how the water moves through the garden, field etc and see how you can slow that down. In many cases, in a field situation is to put in swales to intercept and slow the flow. But short term I have seen rows of large straw bales act a temprorary retaining water to block the water but it does need to be directed somewhere safe. Otherwise is a large rain garden!
I hope your garden has recovered now Sally. Really informative piece 👍🏻
Thank you! All back to normal now!
The bottom of our garden flooded with storm Bert (and then again on Tuesday night) and it ripped the surface of one of the bridges off the supports, so we have had to divert the permissive path that runs through my parents garden through the fence into mine so that the neighbours can get to the village without having to walk down the main road, without a pavement...
But the biggest thing that I wasn't expecting was the quantity of water that flowed straight down the slope in the orchard at the top of my "field" and washed a load of the soil out of my veg garden. Looks like I'm going to have to do some landscaping to divert that surface flow in future. Slowly leaning more about my new garden 😁
Its frightening itsn't it. I have well covered soil in my fields as they are under permanent pasture and the fields are flat, but I get a huge volume of soil being washed into my ponds so I can imagine how much that is magnified with a slope. One of the best pieces of advice I have heard about heavy rain in gardens is to get outside during a deluge and watch how the water moves through the garden, field etc and see how you can slow that down. In many cases, in a field situation is to put in swales to intercept and slow the flow. But short term I have seen rows of large straw bales act a temprorary retaining water to block the water but it does need to be directed somewhere safe. Otherwise is a large rain garden!