Our property has a pond, which was built in the 1950s. It gets a lot of runoff when it rains from the road and surrounding properties, owned by other people. That runoff gathers into quite the stream at the North end of our property, and has a channel that it flows down and into the pond. So, that area was bulldozed in the 1990s, so there is some meadow up there, populated mostly with giant ragweed, but I’m slowly getting other things to grow there.
So I want to redirect the runoff to slow the water down, and get it better filtered before entering the pond. I’ve come up with ideas, including swales and grasses. When we get rain, if its heavy enough to produce runoff, it can be quite a bit. So, I need something quite sturdy.
And my zoology/ecology background brought me to beavers. Anyone else have experience using logs, like long logs, not fireplace logs, to redirect water?
In this picture, you can see the water channel on the left, lined with giant ragweed. We have some young ash trees growing, and with the emerald ash borer in the area, I expect some to succumb to that bug. But maybe we’ll find a resistant one!
Here’s a satilite picture.. the meadow is circled in green. The green highlight is a drainage ditch, or seasonal spring, and the blue line is where the water flows to get to the pond. In heavy enough rain, seems 5 inches or more, the ditch over runs and will spill into the pond. And that is quite the gush of water that happens about where my blue line and the green highlight are closest. The top of the picture is North, and I imagine placing logs at the northwest end where the water enters our property.
I have been doing a lot of similar work redirecting and slowing down water.
What I’m working with has a lot of erosion so it’s a little different. But I make wooden stakes out of lower limbs of cedar trees and hammer them into the ground in rows and then weave and pile larger limbs behind that, kind of like a beaver dam type thing.
I also stick willow cuttings into the areas to establish more living structure. Sometimes I also add sycamore around the edges for longer term growth.
Once you get things established and start holding more water in the area you can add even more “wetland” plants.
The main thing is getting those limbs, or willow cuttings, in the grounds so they can’t wash out during the heavy rains. Build a little “stick wall” across and they will catch a lot of debris and soil that way, it will actually start to build itself.
This is probably more info than you could ever really need but it is a super interesting resource! You can skip down to ~page 60ish to get an idea of some really awesome retaining structures and techniques.
Swales, brush dams, spreader dams, one rock dams, ephemeral ponds. Half moon dams, bde (beaver dam equivalent). Many others that can be used. Some can be used to slow water coming into the stream, others to slow the stream itself.
I would suggest you start at the top and do one structure at a time so you can see the diwnstream effects. You don’t want your work to change the course of the stream and miss something you built downstream.
Where are you on the natural watershed? Looks like the runoff somes mostly from a residential (i.e. constructed) watershed.
Yep. This was farmland until the family sold the land to a developer in 1962. The pond was a livestock pond that is marked as “marshland” in the 1930s. We are totally that kind of nerd to explore the history of this land. I suspect all this area drained into this pond back when. Now, there isn’t great grading and plenty of areas flood, but in this little section, for sure, everything drains into the pond.
I figure I’ll start really working on this in Sept or Oct. Cooling off and all that. Easier to keep things alive. So I’ll keep gathering ideas!
I agree with starting upstream, helps see effects and also if starting downstream you are dealing with 100% of the waterflow which may mean higher chance of washout.
I also prefer to do this work when everything is dormant, including the snakes!
Once you get the water slowed and redirected you can start adding plants like iris, canna, horsetail, etc. to filter all that runoff water. I bet you get a lot of fertilizers, oils, and other nasty stuff washed from those upstream areas.
If you want to get really aggressive, River Cane Arundinaria gigantea is a native wetland bamboo species that is great for erosion control and wildlife habitat.
