A Texan Dry Creek Bed

or, A Regenerative Water Reservoir

Take your pick, but whatever you want to call it, this thing is intended to gather hundreds of gallons of water flowing from my shed roof and the back yard when we get those torrential brief downpours and redirect it into the ground near some vines I'm trying to grow, thereby capturing it from running out into the street and down into the sewer.  In Texas, we need to grab as much water as we can!

I really wanted to learn how to build one of these after hearing Shannon Brown speak from the Ecosystem Regeneration Artisans on efforts they are making to design rainscapes, a landscape which focuses on recharging our aquifer with in-landscape reservoirs. Wow, it's one of those amazing concepts that just seems to make so much sense immediately, why isn't everybody doing this?

My first attempt was a small reservoir in a low area of my yard that receives a lot of watershed from a side roof of my house. I basically dug up an already low area, incorporated it into my flowerbed by moving the rock border out around it, and piled the dirt up onto the opposite side from the water flow to create a small berm. I then filled the low area, about a 3' x 7' x 1" deep hole with some gravel rock and planted the berm and edge of the gravel with some plant volunteers I had popping up in other places of my yard. Bam, nice little reservoir that worked great!

After this success, I decided to move forward with a very bare area of my backyard I always wanted to recreate into a mini-vineyard. It gets full sun and there's a shed/studio project I am starting where I needed a solution to direct water away from the foundation.

Trench

1. After a brief debate with my husband where he doubted my eyeball of the lowest part of the bare area in our yard, I used the system Mike Kincaid describes in his How to Measure Elevation of Land, Slope... to not only prove my superb eyeballing skill but also as a corona-homeschooling STEM project for my 11 year old daughter. She and I identified the lowest point (which was where I suspected it to be), and found it was exactly 8" lower than the base of the shed 30' away.
2. Next, I had to determine the creek path. Some people might do this by marking on the ground with spray paint but, not I. I prefer to just start digging and then of course I inevitably run into large boulders and stumps with this inane talent I have for finding them, and I'll work my way around as the water might, making a small trench about 3" deep. 
3. I knew I eventually wanted the trench to straighten out and run along-side where I'd be planting the vines and then at the end I added a small basin area just at the lowest point.
4. Our ground in this area of the yard has some nice brown composted soil however it's impacted with some really pretty 3" crystalized rock every 6". It means I'm pick-axing about 2' and then clearing it while on my hands and knees, the whole way. I fought for every foot of this trench. The nice thing is, I ended up with a lot of rock to add to the creek bed.
5. OK what'd u do with all the soil? Well, this is what Shannon makes the berms out of!! I decided to place my berm farther away from the creek but at the very end of the yard's low point so that in the future I can have a garden path which walks around the creek's basin and over to the vines in-between the creek and the berm. By putting the berm there it also may catch some water coming from another side of the yard and redirect it into the basin. 2 birds deal thing. 
6. OK - so back to the rock. Yeah, when the dirt removed is 50% rock and I choose to save the rock for the creek, it means I either have a puny berm OR, I need to find a berm building solution! Conveniently at the time I was binge-watching Discovery Channel's Homestead Rescue and during one episode, Misty Raney Bilodeau teaches a homesteader how to build a berm garden from old decomposing logs covered with hay and soil. So off I go one afternoon with my family hunting around the neighborhood for a pile of branches. We had JUST thrown a bunch of our own into the green bin but I have no qualms about hunting for free material and naturally found plenty. And I credit my husband here for suggesting I "lop" the branches down to make a nice even pile. I then added the last 6 months of chicken, guinnea pig, and leaf compost on top of that to form a base for the soil.
7. My dug out trench ended up to be about 12-18" deep and 2' wide. 
8. Next I lined the trench with landscape fabric. I now only use this under rock because my chickens love to turn the flowerbed mulch to search for insects. One ripped a nail off on the fabric and I hate to see my girls bleed so I no longer use it elsewhere.
9. Finally, fill with rock. Rock placement process is outlined in the next section.

Note: So the order should be dig small path to design the creek, determine where to place berm, add logs/branches/compost to berm, dig trench, pile soil onto berm. I tend to do this all at the same time and am moving things around several times in the process thereby making my work as much as possible while changing my mind several times while I learn. 

The berm - lots of branches and compost to make it bigger!

The trench - I won the battle! Berm visible at far end.

Rock It

So there's a bit of a designers eye here and I found it helped me to follow a process to placing the different sized rocks that made the best visual effect. I also drastically underestimated the amount of rock I would need. For my 25' creek I probably used at least a yard of rock.

1. Throw a few big 5-8" rocks along the bottom randomly.
2. Fill the very bottom with medium 2-5" rock.
3. Sprinkle over the bottom medium rock with small 1-2" rock. This sets the bottom of the trench and makes it easy to now walk on.
4. Use medium to big rocks to start building up the sides. At random intervals make a sort of outcropping of big rocks. Do this by placing a pile of big rocks up the side, layering some flatter ones at the top and finally a nice big flat one supported by this pile. 
5. Keep sprinkling in the small rock for visual effect and to cover all landscaping fabric. 

Cheapskate TIP:

- Check Craigslist or FB Marketplace for "free rock" or "free landscaping material". Knock on wood, I've never had to pay for rock yet because I live in a place where there's more rock than soil and folks are always trying to get rid of it. My kids and husband have always been free labor to help me go gather up what I need! They've even spent a mother's day or two (or three or four) on such projects. I'm so spoiled! It's always nice to help someone out with their project by clearing their site a bit for them. 

Finished Product

Reservoir at the end.

Main trench straight run next to vines.