Garden makeover advice, low maintenance

Hi everyone

I'm an active member of a motorhoming forum so I know the value of a good forum when you need advice so I suddenly thought, what better idea than seek out a gardening forum!

Where I'm currently at is this - I live in a valley so my back garden is on two levels, the highest section being quite high with farmers fields directly behind (so I get tons of water pouring down through my garden then down my drive when we get heavy rain). I DID have grass on both these levels, and at the front, up until a week ago when we took the plunge to hire mini diggers to remove all the grass - mainly cos I'm 4ft 11 at a stretch so I really struggle hoiking a lawn mower up n down and round the front! I'm shattered before I even start!

So my main question at the moment is this, what would you say is the easiest and most cost effective land drain method I could carry out to slow down/redirect the amount of water coming down at me from t'hills? I'm not lucky enough to have tons of money to throw at this so, ideally, something me and my fella could tackle together.

My plan once I ensure the drainage is improved is to lay membrane, cover with gravel, get a nice new shed up, and we've inherited some used decking from a friend I appreciate there'll still be weeding to do amongst the gravel but I'm hoping it'll be less work than trying to maintain multi-level patches of grass with a (sorry, no offence to other vertically challenged folk) midget like me in charge of a mower!

Hopefully the gravel will help somewhat with my drainage as well, is that right?

Thanks for any advice
Sharon

 

OK so Russ has just been explaining to me the joys of shrinking your photos to fit so let me test if I've wrapped my head around it yet, I'll try to upload a photo of my garden so you can see the layout I'm describing...

 

...so basically the water comes down from the hills in this next photo, torrents down the steps on the left hand of the highest level, travels across the middle "lawn" then torrents down the final set of steps.... and heads straight for the small drain under my kitchen window which, when the rains really heavy, can't cope with it fast enough so I get ground water rising just outside my patio windows until it subsides enough to run away down my drive and the drain catches up with the storm. Never had the house flood yet but if I can do something about it before it does, all the better!

 

What a beautiful view, I'm jealous!

There are other members that will give you good ideas on drainage, as it's a problem I've not had to deal with I'm not much help. It seems obvious to me to try and stop your 'waterfall' before it gets further into the garden so I would suggest some deep drainage at the top tier/far end of the garden. Talking of waterfalls......perhaps you could create a pond or bog garden on the top level.

 

Thanks Sheal, they are wonderful views, I am so lucky and it really is what made me buy the house.

When you say waterfall, you've hit the nail on the head there - in heavy storms, it looks just like a waterfall coming down off those top steps at the highest level and another waterfall coming down the lower steps.

Perhaps I could go all "eco" and catch all this water somehow? I guess that'd be the ultimate answer.

And maybe your idea of a pond at the top could tie in? I do have two pre-formed ponds already that I could utilise, we originally installed one pond into the lower left bed but it hasn't really worked out very well there so I was going to remove it anyway, maybe a relocation to the top level would be an idea?

 

Cheers Russ I was googling french drains the other night and was also looking at those gully things as I think my neighbour has installed some of those on the ground level in his garden, I presume to catch and redirect some of the excess water the poor little drain under our kitchen window can't handle all on its own

All ideas VERY gratefully received as we're trying to move on with the next stage next week....when we figure out what the next stage is!

 

I'll be much more use in the morning, drinking now

 

LOL no worries Zigs, whenever you're up to it

And yet you still managed to teach me how to resize me photos!

 

I think I may have had a eureka moment in the night just remembered that, when I had someone in quite a few years ago to take down the old garden wall and rebuild a wall further away from the house, they uncovered an old culvert (? 1st photo) under my garden which (I think) is located right beneneath the lowest set of steps - from these photos I took during construction, it looks like the gardener fed some land drain pipes into the culvert:







So might it just work if I utilise the two preformed ponds I've got and place them "in the path" of where any rainstorm water usually flows into the garden from the fields above me - maybe one on that top level as Sheal suggested and the other at the bottom of that top set of steps - then maybe dig some sort of "rockery path" across the land (got plenty of rocks I can re-use for that ) to direct the water towards, and into, this old culvert?

sorry for HUGE posts, I'm thinking really hard!