Sometimes you just have to go with the flow…

When we built our house, I did a garden design for the site. I am amazed that the layout has turned out pretty much as per the plan. It is particularly difficult to design one’s own garden because it is (literally) so close to home.
However, some of my plan is beginning to change now that we are living there. At the patio area, I had planned to have no lawn, just gravel with architectural plants. During the winter however, the area has become rather waterlogged. There is a bit of a bank and rainwater tends to congregate at the bottom. One option would be to lay pipes and drain it, but I thought a more interesting plan would be to channel the rainwater above ground in a rill and have it running into a small pond. Because the area is reliably boggy all year round, I had already planned to use moisture tolerant plants. Now they will be completely at home with their own natural water feature. Open water is lovely, but not ideal if there are any young children around, so if you are thinking of doing something like this, make sure it is fenced off securely or fitted with a reinforced grille below the surface of the water.