What will do well in the Pacoific Northwest setting described depends on the degree of drying experienced in the summer. I have experience with a natural pond in the Cascade foothills and with a constructed "bioswale" or "rain garden" in my present garden. The latter comprises deep, layered soil and gravel strata confined on the downhill side by a soil berm, and I had to install it in order to comply with county regulations connected with the installation of my large greenhouse. The natural pond, in woodland, dropped 1 or 2 feet in summer but still had enough water to host ducks, newts, etc. The bioswale has a little standing water in winter (it works) and gets some incidental irrigation in summer. The first thing to understand is that once you disturb a moist habitat, every grass and weed from miles around will sow into it. I have a lot of Camassia (several species) in the bioswale, but this spring deer ate all the flowering stems. I grew it all from seed, and it didn't take more than three years to flowering. Now it self-sows heavily. On the berm there are a lot of Oncostemma (Scilla) peruviana, which I put there after seeing it in similar habitats in nature. Several fall crocuses also do well on the berm. I had Erythranthe (Mimulus) cardinalis but found it too invasive. E. (M.) guttatus I would think requires moving water to flourish, and this is also true of other herbaceous (former?) Mimulus. I think Lilium pardalinum also requires moving water near it, but not over it; plants I put in a moist but not perfectly drained area died out after a few years. The county agency that deals with such things gave me a list of "appropriate plants" for the bioswale, almost all native species and mostly things I would never allow in a maintained garden (e.g., Thimbleberry, Rubus parviflorus). The main shrub I have used is a Japanese willow, Salix chaenomeloides, which has very large pink catkins and can be pruned for control; it does not spread underground. Some plants I'm allowing in the wet part are lily of the valley (Convallaria maialis), Caltha selections, Iris ensata (wild type), and a non-spreading double Ranunculus. Doing well on the parts of the berm that dry out some in summer are Dodecatheon spp. The typical choices of vegetation for bioswales are "ornamental grasses," a phrase I usually regard as an oxymoron, but if you can limit it to those that are not stoloniferous, I suppose they're fine, as long as you don't want to grow bulbs within their zone. The Primulas that Jan recommended are fine only if their site remains consistently moist through summer; they do best in streamside situations in the Northwest. I didn't plant much around the natural pond because the water level fluctuated so much, it was in the woods, and there were plant predators such as deer and mountain beaver (Oplodonta). The banks did not host many of the rich flora of the surrounding woodland, but red huckleberry (Vaccinium sp.) grew well there and is not invasive. In the swale above the spring that fed the pond, there was a huge patch of coltsfoot (Petasites frigidus), which is not something to turn loose in a garden, although in the wild it can be quite ornamental, especially in early spring. The same is true of western skunk cabbages (Lysichiton spp.). This is a good example of why one should have experience with native plants before introducing them into a garden where they don't have acres to spread out. I was fortunate to spend my first 25 years of Northwest gardening among a diverse rural plant community, so I knew what to avoid once I downsized to a half-acre in a suburb. Some correspondents have recommended plants of moist habitats in eastern North America, but these generally do not do well on the Pacific coast, probably because of low summer humidity. Jane McGary, Portland, Oregon, USA _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net>