We have a drainage problem in our rental too, and we're also cursed with clay. From my experience, changing the grade makes all the difference. But be careful that your efforts to buid up the low spot don't accidentally redirect the water into the garden beds. It might be more useful to build up an area closer to the house, and dig a sort of shallow, inclined drainage ditch from the low spot to the drainage creek - intentionally directing the water between the garden beds so it won't flood into them. As for collecting the water, you could certainly put some barrels under the spots where the water flows off the roof. But whatever you do, make sure the drainage situation is adequately resolved before you put in many plants. I lost four plants to poor drainage this winter, and almost lost a fifth - my evergreen coffeeberry lost almost all its leaves, and I'm still waiting to see whether it will recover. Here is a link that might be useful: pictures of my drainage ditch

Thank you, Mike for your thoughtful response; I appreciate it. I have a lot which need a 6 mos - 1 yr growth (most are fast-growing shrubs), to sell to customers, so maybe you're right, selling a bunch off to a nursery or garden center could help to bring the bulk down. I really didn't think I was going to have so much trouble renting outdoor - or - greenhouse space. It's a new lesson for me. My apologies to any reader who felt my panic by reading my question... :) Deb.

Storage, storage, and more storage. Think about how you want to use the space, and plan plenty of closets to accommodate all the things required. Otherwise, you will have a job on your hands to keep it from getting junky. So here is more than you wanted to know about what we did: When we did our basement, which also included a long one-car garage along half of one side, we put in a u-shaped light shop space (no power tools except drills and the like) at the end with a deep sink in the center of the U, one side dedicated to plant care and flower arranging, peg board (painted white) lining the walls up to 6'8", and a deep shelf on ordinary white hardware store brackets above that. I recycled two L-shaped wooden countertops that were cast-offs from another project, stained them, and finished them with spar varnish. I designed the supporting structure (painted dark gray) to accommodate three mobile storage basket units that I already had. I painted the wall over the sink (no pegboard there) with chalkboard paint, which was great for jotting down measurements and things to go on the shopping list. We used plain old rectangular florescent tube fixtures in the ceiling, which gave exactly the kind of clean light we needed, and a couple of boxes of peel and stick vinyl tiles on the concrete floor. The short wall of the house which had the garage door and the entry door from the driveway was our foul-weather entrance, and had a fireplace in it, so I allocated half that space to a warm sitting area, and put a trestle table to serve as a desk behind the small sofa that faced the fireplace. I dealt with the high little windows along the long wall (with a lovely view of the bottoms of the boxwoods along the front of the house) like this: Behind that area, I created a hallway to the back space by building a cedar closet on one side, which ran under the staircase, and a long deep closet with three doors in the wall and deep shelves lining the whole thing on the other. Where the cedar closet ended, under the low part of the stairs, I built in a niche for a long 2-drawer lateral file cabinet. We had the stairs rebuilt to create a 3 x 3 landing at the 3rd stair up, so we could turn the bottom stairs to face into that hall, and create an easier and more attractive entry to upstairs. Beyond that hallway was enough space for a pantry closet and a wine closet along the short wall, and a chest of drawers perpendicular to that. Beyond the stairway was the door to a new laundry room and a walled-off area for the HVAC and hot water tank (with louvered doors), and between the laundry room and the back wall of the garage workspace, we put in a big bathroom with changing space for anyone using the pool, or coming in from the garden all covered with muck. We did the bathroom very economically - the things we spent any money on were a Venetian marble shower stall and long countertop with an integral sink. Instead of a vanity, we mirrored the wall and attached a simple framework with a stained birch plywood fascia along the wall to support the countertop, built a 10" high plinth along the floor under it, and put big baskets of towels and washing and sun supplies on it. Then we ran a 2x10 along the wall opposite the shower with many hooks for damp towels and bathing suits, and added a simple garden bench. I loved it. It made my too-big house completely manageable.

Just a minor comment here... While a tenant would certainly appreciate getting a larger window, it would mean a great intrusion into their lives (likelihood of interrupted sleep for a med student/resident), and a risk to their possessions. Two musician friends of mine, still college students, had a landlord who decided to refurbish their kitchen. Good -- except that while they were gone during the day, leaving their extremely expensive instruments home, he left the house wide open with no windows. He thought they were "just students" with nothing of value. Little did he realize that he was exposing them to the possible loss of instruments worth more than the house. Since it sounds like you can't do the work now, I would discuss with any potential tenants how you would handle security and what hours workers would be there. It may be only a rental, but during their tenancy it is their home.