My site currently hosts mostly pine trees and a few other interesting native plants. I would like to step up the water storage capability and am looking for ideas.

My plans so far include:
Hugelkulture in a few areas
A pond (lined of course) fed by the house downspouts
Heavy mulching and heavily increase the organic matter in the soil
Swales where I can

Has anyone else been presented with these problems? How did you solve them?

your ideas sound fine to me, nothing like keeping adding that organic material in, raised beds will still be best over time, use lots of mulch and maybe even hugelkultur under the beds.

len

Klaus

yes the wood chip would be good in hk, but maybe outside the box you could lay it in long rows oh! i dunno 1/2 meter high and wide along the contours to act as swales and in time it will rot down bolstering your soil.

could do the same with bales of spoilt hay material (greens) or straw (browns), be less labour intensive than diging a trench swale that has to be all but perfectly horizontal.

the raised beds won't miss not having hk over time

did you check our bale garden presentation?

if you plant trees along where the swales might go and mulch around the trees and between them in rows then you get 2 birds with the one stone hey?

len