guildfordcycads

The picture has the side and top view of our garden. I’ve broken the garden into 2 parts A and B. I’m currently working on A.

General characteristics:
-Side of a hill
-Compacted soil
-Rocky layer underneath
-Hydrophobic soil (after a short but heavy rain only the top 5cm of the soil is wet, all the rest of the water flows down the hill)
-Filled with grass, flowers and weeds
-Summer droughts are expected
-Summer rains are usually 10-30 min long, but heavy and don’t happen too often (last few years we had about 3 rains in 3 months with temperatures above 30 celsius that’s 86 fahrenheit. Everything is usually like a wasteland in the summer)

B:
-elevation 11-12 degrees
-rows of grapes planted
-it’s slightly tilted to the left side, so water flows slightly to the left

A:
-elevation 2-4 degrees
-I dug a swale to catch the rain water flowing down from B (the dark brown part of the picture)
-I used the soil from the swale to level a part of the area for planting (the yellow part of the picture)
-I’m planning on digging it up more and fill it with 2 hugelkultur beds to help with water retention and to add some organic material

The planting area of 3.5x4m is quite large for a single bed so I’ve decided to cut it in half and make 2 beds. A top bed and a bottom bed. The top bed would be right next to the swale. So it would get good amounts of rain water during droughts. But the bottom bed wouldn’t get much of it. So I was thinking of digging a horizontal swale across the planting area between the top and the bottom beds. And redirecting some of the water from the original swale. I’m just not sure how to do it. I could use some pipes or dig another swale around the planting area. Maybe add some little dams. Or I could try to make the whole swale leveled so all the water can be distributed evenly between the top and bottom beds.

Any ideas would be helpful that would help with water retention thanks.

Hi, new here. I’m curious where everyone is from? Just to get a sense of whether there are members who share similar landscapes, such as climate, soils, vegetation, weather, critters, and regulations. Just for fun. You don’t have to share your specific city. For example, I live in Northern California on the coast, where our summers are traditionally foggy with moderate temperatures year-round. You can share just the state you’re in or even your country if you’re outside the US. Ps. I can’t write I have spent way too long trying to word this right and still sound like an idiot and that’s after copying and pasting to Facebook to use the “help me write” AI thing. And I swear it was getting worse and worse to the point I give up and am just posting this. Just wanted to ask where everyone was from but now I feel like I am trying to be some kind of tracker or something lol dumb. Moderator feel free to delete.