A dry creek bed is easy to build as long as there is a place for the water to go. We routed the downspouts from our front gutters and the overflow from our water feature to drain here. This also catches all of the run off from our meadow. At the bottom of the slope in my garden above the dry creek, we have a rain garden of plants that like full sun and wet feet in winter, yet won't die in our summer. We already had a ditch, so there was very little digging. We used one pallet of river rock that was around $275 last fall. We used permeable landscape fabric underneath to control the weeds. We don't use fabric in flower beds, BTW! It took 3 of us half a day to do this, but that was with our archaeologist son looking through the stone for arrowheads (which he found). My husband and I didn't mind the slow pace! This was created in September 2006, so the plant material is new. Sidebar: The wire edging is a temporary detterent to deer to keep them from trampling the new plants. It's working so far since everything is deer resistant

well, your landscape architect is right about the rocky shore on one side and the shallow bit on the other. They just look to this landscape architect to be on the wrong side. i don't know your particular LA but I have spent too many hours educating landscape architecture students that have never been to a national forest let alone gone on expedition hikes or canoe expeditions to automatically trust their concepts of nature. I'm sure sonewhere there is a creek that has that condition, but as you can see from the link erosion tends to work the other way. Scroll down until you see the windy river diagram. Here is a link that might be useful: erosion

Thank-you people! We now have a fairly long dry creek which needs to handle a high volume of water. It has two levels - water comes in from the top and is "visual" and then directly under this is a hidden french drain - they all drain into a dry pond which will be filled with moisture loving native plants to clean the ground water - then it all goes back into a pipe and down the way. There are also funky tributaries to our dry creek to handle all the water coming down the bank, a few more areas need to be incorporated. It was made by the contractors and we just used rip rap but I will also add in my concrete "chunks" and the few nice found rocks the contractors dug up while grading. Eduarda, thanks for that article! It's perfect. Essentially I want mine to look like a cross between Cameron's beautiful dry creek and the Fine Gardening dry creek. Cameron, I will need to get some ideas from you about the native grasses you planted in here. Luckily I will have the ability, if necessary to "reverse" the flow of water from stored water back into the dry creek to keep everything moist. A pump and an underground water line that runs back up to the "front" of the stream will do the trick. So far our "project" is shaping up very well. A few more things need to happen before the patios go in - more retaining walls and drainage. I've got a LOT of planting to do these next few years. I have a feeling winter sowing will be my best friend!

From my own experience with rocks around the yard do not work out very well for looking good for very long. Mine were meant for looks only around the pool. Spend 300 bucks just for the rocks alone and DH and I had to haul them to the back. This was before I started planning on gardening the yard but I sure wished that I had known I was going to garden cause I would have planted something all around the pool instead of putting down the rocks. Live and learn HUH. If I had to choose I'd go with French drain. I don't have a dry river bed but do have river rocks around the pool BIG mistake dirt and leaves get in the cracks then seeds from weeds get in there and I've got to weed it all the time and I have the heavy black plastic down but that does not stop dirt on top getting in between the rocks. Good luck hope this is helpful.