Where do your buildings sit relative to the ground? The bottom of your house should/might have a "sill plate" that marks the essential bottom of the house. Below that there will be a slab or other base that is designed to be buried underground. From the sill plate down, the soil should not start until four inches below the bottom of the sill plate. (the sill plate sticks out from the lower base of the house by 3/4 inch or so all around). Then your soil should slant away from all the buildings. If you have that, then your yard is properly designed and your neighbor's is not. It could be he has fallen into the trap of "throwing a little topsoil" on it every year. I've seen build up of 8 inches from this practice. You might talk (nicely) to him about that to get to the root of the problem. It doesn't seem like a quarter inch of soil could hurt anything but over time it can mess with yours and everyone elses drainage. Then you might have to have a professional come in to regrade the yard so you have proper drainage. Where it goes might be up to the local city planning department. On your tree, when you look at the ground now do you see where the roots flare out away from the trunk? If so then the tree is sitting properly in the soil. If you do not see the root flare and it looks more like a telephone pole sticking out of the ground, then you should dig down to expose the flare of the roots. Trunk bark is different from root bark. Trunk bark can get fungal diseases that root bark cannot. If you bury the trunk, even only one inch, that trunk bark can get a disease that girdles and kills the tree. If you are already to low with the tree, you can dig it out with water pressure from a hose and place a physical base around the tree. That would be to keep the soil from washing back in. Make it about 4 inches or whatever brings you to grade and encircle the tree completely. You don't have to go way far out into the yard with it. You only have to keep the trunk bark from staying soggy. Misplacing a tree in the ground is a very common mistake. You can even buy new trees from the garden center that are planted too deep in their own pots.

Amanda, Sorry t take so long to get back to this, I've been thinking on it and I think your issues are a lot different to the ones Bernergrrl refers to. By the sounds of it you actually have a degree of flow in progress already, if you used to have a natural stream and it's the disruption of this that has caused the damp patch then I think it should be quite easy to create a mini environment that has a lot more to offer than wet feet! If as you say you already have clayey soil you may find that as you dig you meet more of this. One way to make a pond before the days of fibreglass pre-formed pools and butyl liners, was to "Puddle" clay, this literally is to line your excavation with compacted clay, so I would guess you would not need a liner. Also if you have a lot of ground water in the area, a liner can have problems with the ground water rising beneath it. I would guess you should go at least 24" deep at the deepest but that you should do the inverted hat style, ie a wide brim and a deeper centre. This gives you lots of scope for plants and wildlife. Once you get established, the larger insects within the pond take care of the mosquito larvae. I wouldn't bother with fish, that's a whole different ball game, fish eat everything damsel fly, dragon fly larvae, spawn, newts, frogs etc. then get busy on the plats so you end up with a big fish bowl. You mention that the damp patch extends into your neighbours woods. Is this where the natural stream ran to, if so that should be ideal as you can create an overlflow channel that drains off there. It may be that you are seasonally dryer at some stages, it's quite easy to top up with tap water, but check what chemicals get added, or whether you have hard water, even so normally it just takes a couple of days to settle down again. Get to the library and read some books on pond planting, remember you are planting firstly submerged plants like Canadian pondweed (Elodea canadensis), Myriophyllum aquaticum(parrot's fether), Myriophyllum spicatum(spiked milfoil) and a host of others to oxagenate the water, check with what you have locally that is not considered invasive. Next you have deep water plants like your water lilies, nuphar, Hottonia, Orontium, Aponogeton, that all grow from the bottom of your pool and float their leaves on the surface. You also have floating aquatics, like stratiotes(water soldiers), Trapa(water chestnut), Hydrocharis(frogbit) etc. Then you have your marginals, ranging from those that like to be in water with their crowns covered to those that just need to be near water and have a constant supply of moisture, there are literally hundreds of these, try and avoid any that are going to be a self seeding nuisance, and you sould please your wildlife. You can add non natives as you want but again watch out for those that may escape and become a nuisance. Again, the overflow area and run off channel can be planted up as a bog, making the most of the feature. I read a good few books before building my pond. I work at home, and my office window looks out onto the pond, believe me it's alive all year round and is great fun. I do about 2 days maintenance on it a year, usually thinning out the faster growing plants, or collecting seed before dispersal, other than that it's entirely self maintaining, a lot less work than the equivalent patch of grass! Hope this helps! As for Bernergrrl's mud, I think that's a harder situation. Again, is this a sump?? has it been there for a long time, is there any flow, sounds like a whole heap of rotten vegetation has built up. Best to excavate it out and get some oxagenating plants in there, mixing soil and grit in will help a little but won't cure it. Give us a bit more description of what the surrounding area is like and waht has caused this?? Cheers Greenmanplants

Thanks everybody. I'm no soil expert, but to me the ground looks sandy and has lots of larger rocks in it (it's definitely not red clay). It also seems similar on other parts of the property, so I'm thinking this is just the nature of this area. Given that it's so sandy/rocky, it's a bit surprising that it holds so much water. I'm going to eventually have to divert some of the runoff to be able to do anything with it, but I'll never want to get it too dry because the well is close by. It may actually be a plus in the summer when everything dries up a bit, but I like to garden year 'round so I thought I'd pick everybody's brains for edibles that were known to be particularly wet-feet tolerant. That said, I have bigger problems at the moment. As far as I can tell, the ground is devoid of nutrients and organic matter (though I need to do an actual soil test). It does grow some weeds and field grass, but nothing is thriving. I also had several cool veggie starts going so I planted those into a small dry hump in the field a month or so ago. As of now they are looking anemic and showing very poor color. I guess I'm not gardening in the fertile river valley any more. :( Luckily I have a pretty good stock pile of horse/rabbit manure, and we compost diligently. So hopefully I can at least get the dry hump fertile by next year while I plot my drainage issues for the majority of the field. Thanks again for the suggestions everybody. -Rob

If there is indeed a layer of compacted gravel under where the pavers were, I agree you'd want to remove that. Quickest way would be a dozer to scrape soil off and stockpile, then remove the gravel and dispose, then put the soil back. Once that soil is all broken up, they could use something like a landscape rake to pull out bricks and rocks. Now, if the debris is really bad, you could have topsoil hauled in, but it comes down to the cost of remediating the soil you have vs. paying to haul it off plus paying for new topsoil and the hauling and labor to put it down. Contractors can tell you the best way to go. If you stick with the soil you have and clean it up a bit, then bring in some loads of compost to mix into it as the final step. That would also bring the grade back up and compensate for whatever is removed during the cleanup. Get more than one estimate if you're paying to have it done.