My back garden slopes slightly and so I have a part of the garden that remains soggy after rainfall. Other than that it is OK.

Please help me on plants, shrubs and ornamental grasses that can grow in this. The garden gets sun early morning until midday and some a little later on.

Any suggestions. I live in Burlington, Ontario

Hi there. Go to www.gardening.com which is Sierra and to plant encyclopedia. You can get a list of plants that will grow in your conditions. Also try arborquest.com

I live in Oakville and I too have a 'wet corner' where our lot and the three neighboring lots all slope to. In the spring there is sometimes standing water there and, since my soil is clay, it's heavy as well as wet. I started 'renovating' this area last spring (we moved here in late 1999 and I got started last year but also needed to assess exactly how bad things were... so this year I've been making more extensive changes - such as adding 4-6 inches of Petrie's top dressing soil to the whole area....) It's starting to turn into my nicest garden! You didn't say how big an area you're dealing with. Mine is about 30 feet wide and 20 feet deep. The absolutely wettest area is about 5 feet on each side. What I've got is: - in the wettest area, Ostrich Ferns; - back a bit from that I have Rogersia (Ligularia didn't survive the winter but my Rogersia did), Yellow Flag Iris (plant inside a root barrier...), Sweet Flag, Marsh Marigolds,Japanese Iris and Mayapple; - moving further back again but still withing 4 feet of the worst of the wet I have Ivory Halo variegated Dogwood,Winterberry (deciduous native holly), Snowy Woodrush (this is a shaded area too), Goatsbeard, Black Snakeroot,and Astilbe; - then I have a mixed bag of things including Cardinal Flower, Foxglove, candelabra Primroses (Japanese would have been better but I couldn't find them...), Lady's Mantle, Monarda, Hosta, Filipendula, several variegated sedges, Siberian Irises and perennial Lobelia; - in the top (relatively drier) side of things I have a large bed of mixed Daylilies, Oak Leaf Hydrangea, Silverleaf Dogwood, Japanese Painted Fern, Chelone (Turtlehead), bugbanes (cimicifuga), Sweet Violets and variegated loosestrife (plant inside a root barrier...); - along the side of the garden shed that borders this area I have American Elder for the flowers in summer and berries for the birds in fall and winter.

Some of the plants I started from seeds but many of them I bought at Bulows Garden Center - the one on Lakeshore in east Oakville/Clarkson (just east of Winston Churchill), not the main one on the South Service Road in Oakville. Hanna Bulow is very helpful and likes to find interesting plants for me and will order anything she doesn't have in stock. I find her father, at the bigger location, is not so helpful. Hanna's location is a bit scruffy-looking and you can drive right past it without noticing it because it's tucked in beside a commercial/industrial building but it's one of my favorite places to buy plants - in fact I just bought a bunch of things there today.

So, don't let your wet area deter you - use it as an incentive to explore the world of bog, near-bog and moist prefering plants! There are some amazing things out there if you do a little reaseach and look around a bit. Good luck.

In my bog garden, I also have Trollius ("Globeflower")- has yellow flowers, Toadlilies, Aruncus ("Goats' Beard"), Daylilies, Siberian and Japanese Irises. My favourite garden nursery is Humber Nurseries. The plants and trees are organized so well and the staff are very knowledgeable (make sure he/she is a horticulturist). Here's their website: http://www.gardencentre.com/

Thanks the above infos are very helpful. I will take a drive and look for Hanna Bulow.