Rain Garden, Hugelkulture & Terra Petra garden mashup

Unrelated photo. I just love I have Violets growing in my backyard

Today I dug up a bit of my front yard to build a rain garden of sorts. There looks to be a drainage gully leading from the front of the house to the street. I dug a dike 1 lawn mower width from the corner of my driveway and sidewalk. Gotta make the chores as easy as I can.

The city had dug up the water shut-off valve last summer here.

What I did is dug a deep trench and dropped a bunch of short logs into it. What will happen is these logs will start to rot in a few years and turn into giant water sponges. By placing these in the path of the drainage gully I am hoping that they will soak up and hold the rain water. I planted a bunch of irises and purple cone flower seeds.

All the logs dropped into this hugelkulture bed

Watering the bed in. See how it forms a dike making a rain garden?

I also planted my grapevine. This I dug a deep hole that I dropped a bunch of half burned fire wood down. I also mashed up some of the charcoal I made my dousing my campfires. The charcoal will hopefully form Terra Petra of sorts.