I started a thread about putting in a rain garden that got way off track because I included both too much information (pics of a major atypical flood) and too little (all the other reasons why we have stormwater problems on our lot).

This thread is to take this back on the track I reall want it to be on.

Here's the deal: The house behind my L-shaped lot is on slightly higher ground than mine - it's a much newer house, and lot appears to have been built up and graded away from the house when it was built, so our driveway gets a lot of their runoff to begin with. Add to that, his downspouts (front & back, which take off water from probably 75% or more of his total roof area) end in pipes that discharge maybe a foot from our property line -- right where the ground starts to slope down towards my house, so essentially he's dumping it on us and there's not a damn thing we can do about it unless we want to take him to court, which we don't.

So in order to address this particular problem, which in a typical heavy rain leads to some puddling right where we park our cars, I'd like to do something that will

(1) if possible, keep water from a normal rain from flowing from his lot onto ours

(2) in a heavy rain, do something to contain and/or divert the water

(3) look nice

Here are two pics of the area, the first from teh street looking back to our shed (neighbor on higher ground on the right, lot line is just on the left of the line of trees), the second from the shed looking towards the street.

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I had originall thought of a swale and berm along that tree line on my side of the property, but quickly realized that it wasn't going to be an effective solution -mainly too much risk of the berm being washed out before it was fully established.

One idea I had was to build a raised bed along there, though I guess it would only really be raised from my property -- it would be only slightly above my neighbor's yard. First, I figured the raised bed could act as dam to keep out the runoff from the neighbor's yard during a normal rain. If it was a hard rain it would overflow the top and saturate the bed, but that would still (presumably) keep a lot of the water from flowing onto my driveway. I'm thinking that perhaps (if it would help significantly) I could even put a french drain at the bottom of the raised bed which discharged by the street, to carry off that water.

I have no idea if this would really work the way I think it might though.

I'm definitely open to other ideas, too.

FYI, the line of trees you see in the pics are planted just inches away from the lot line, on his side of the lot line.

Thanks!