To determine if drainage is the problem dig a hole 1 foot square and 1 foot deep and fill it with water. After that water drains away refill the hole with water and time how long it takes for that water to drain. If the water is gone in an hour or two drainage may be too fast, but if the water is still there after several hours the soil stays too wet too long. A trench, as suggested above, may direct surface water away, if constructed properly, but will do little to help with excessive ground water. Compacted soils can hold too much water but they also restrict the amount of air plant roots can get, and plant roots do need air. Organic matter can help uncompact soils and can help with air exchange those plant roots need as well as promote better drainage.

Any organic matter helps - leaf mold, chopped straw or hay, cotton or coffee hulls, etc. Not as effective at compost but helps. Peat skews your soil pH so use depends on your pH. Sand, per all the discussions over on the Soil forum, doesn't help much and it takes a lot of it. Even unfinished compost works and it finishes composting in place. Did you fill the whole bed with only compost? Nothing else? Your compost contains enough diverse components or just turf. Perhaps it needs more carbons added to decompose. Do you run an active hot compost pile or a stacked cold pile? What is available to you locally? Dave

What several have already said about digging up the plants in fall, removing the weed fabric, and adding soil/amendments as needed ... after correcting the drainage issue if necessary. Did water pool there before? If so, might there be compacted soil or a clay hardpan? You'll have to break through this to improve drainage. Also, since you're adding soil on the other side of the walk, make sure you're not going to be directing water towards your house. Fall is actually the best time to plant. The air is cooler, the sun's rays weaker, putting less demand on the plants, but the soil is still warm, so encourages root growth. With very few exceptions, plants (whether annuals, perennials, shrubs, vines, trees ... whatever) should always be planted at the same depth at which they had been growing. Their roots have developed at the proper depth to provide the water, oxygen and nutrients the plant needs. Changing the soil level will, at best, stress the plant, at worst, kill it. (Tomatoes are one notable exception. Since they have an abundance of adventitious buds in their stems that will produce roots, you can bury a goodly portion of the stem when planting, to encourage a larger root system.)

While technically I don't disagree with GG that adding ROCK to it will work and allow water to continue. It will slow the water and it won't prevent things from eventually sifting down toward the bottom of the trough and silting up the rocks. Cleaning it out then will be a royal pain. Given that when drainage apparati clog or stop working for unknown reasons, it can cause a lot of havoc. I would discourage doing anything that would diminish the water carrying capacity of the trough ... though I think it is not a well thought out solution. One thing we don't seem to know: Is this trough the SOURCE of water that runs through the pipe? Is it the COLLECTION POINT? If it is you could convert it to a normal yard drain which would be smaller and more easily maintained. It would require grading the watershed area that feeds it (which could be extremely small) to the drain. Again, since we're working with something that is not well thought out, we need to know what it is supposed to be doing before making changes. If it is so badly thought out that it is not really serving a genuine purpose, it could be removed. But we don't know that yet. Where is all the water that's going to enter this thing going to come from and how will it get in there? This must be SHOWN and explained, not just explained. I will add that this structure looks potentially dangerous to anyone who might not expect it.