Blog

Mid July 2025

Two Inexpensive Ways to Redirect or Slow Down Water with Heavy Rains

Whenever my company took on a new client, the first thing we looked at was how and where water ran off their land. Grade was essential in capturing and redirecting water so rainfall didn’t destroy or rot plants, cause insect problems or hurt house foundations.

Correcting water problems for our crew included catching it off of dripping roofs with no gutters, catching rain that fell out of downspouts and sometimes building dry creek beds to make a large area drain well.

Mitigating water problems usually took lots of digging and extensive interlocking PVC pipes and French drains.

Here are a couple of inexpensive but effective ways to help mitigate smaller problems so that heavy rains don’t wipe our your garden, lawn or street gutter.

A Poor Man’s French Drain

My property includes about 1/4 acre of woods where I have been planting shade loving perennials like lobelia, chelone, cicumfugia, tiarella, tricyrtis, astilbe, acanthus ,helleborus and lots of ferns.

Earlier this spring we noticed a lot of surface water spreading down one slope in the woods. We noticed a slimy silt that slowly but constantly flowed past my woodland bloomers!

We called in our irrigation company not twice, but 3 times to try and find a broken irrigation pipe from somewhere in the woods. After the third time they dug around and ran through our system, we all agreed the water was coming from an underground spring which filled up and bubbled up with lots of rain. I watched my perennials slowly turn yellow and wilt. They were slowly and constantly getting watered!

Last week my gardener friend, Carlos, suggested redirecting the water with gravel, a bucket and 2” PVC piping.

Carlos dug a hole right on top of the bubbling area. The hole immediately filled up with water.

He drilled a hole in the side of the bucket, put gravel in the bucket and pushed the 2” PVC pipe in the side hole of the bucket.

Next, he dug a trench to the bottom of the slope. Gravel was put into the small trench with the PVC pipe. More gravel was put on top of the pipe.The gravel inside the buried bucket was kept exposed.

We do not want not want dirt falling into the gravel bucket and clogging up the system.

It works! I can see the whole area drying up even with more rainfall. Water drips slowly out the pipe and down the ditch to a culvert, instead of coming uncontrolled down the slope in a wide fan shape.

I regarded it as a ‘poor man’s’ French drain. Compare our bucket to a French drain box. French drains have a hole on the side of their box, like our bucket, and also require the builder to attach the PVC pipe to the hole like we did.

‘Check dams’

My neighborhood out in the country has gravel roads with a slight rise in the center of the road so that rain falls away to the side dirt gutters. With the past 32” of rain so far this year, I am slowly watching the side gutters to the road, where water runs off, getting deeper and deeper.

How do I know the side trenches are getting deeper? The heck with measuring! Mine is a fool proof method. While running my dogs by my golf cart, I notice that where I used to see my dogs’ legs as they got drinks of water in water pockets, I now only see only the top of their backs! Fast moving water erodes whatever is under it with time.

A cheap fix here is to slow down erosion with a ‘check dam’. You might have seen these along highways or beside steep roads. The point of a check dam is to slow down water and stop a lot of sediment and debris that fast moving water can carry.

A check dam is easy enough to make. Take rip rap which is shown below,

or larger river stone and pile it just enough to block the ditch, gutter, and or trough about halfway up. You don’t want to block the ditch completely and cause water to jump up on the road. Recreate the check dam in areas that continue to be steep.

Below are photos of the ‘home-made’ but effective check dams alongside our neighborhood road. You can see how they slow down leaves and gravel causing water to be moving more slowly.

When the moving water hits the rock it slows down. It allows water to flow through the stone while capturing gravel/leaves and dirt.

The great news is that everything required for the check dam is cheap! You only need rocks, a bucket, PVC piping and your labor.

Christie lives in Manakin Sabot , Virginia where she manages a 3 acre garden. Her blogs are written from her 35 years as a personal and professional gardener.