I've posted about this before but wanted to try again. We moved into our newly built house in January. When we chose the lot, we didn't realize all the water from the house(s) behind us would run down a swale/French drain along our property line and ultimately flow onto our street. As you can imagine, this is not good, but we're stuck with it. The biggest problem is the corners of our backyard. They both had standing water, so we griped at the builder and their response was to add more dirt, which was a disaster. It not only didn't help, it made the water creep even further into the yard. (What's even more unbelievable, they actually had surveyors working on this.) After a month, I went out there and removed the sod, which had turned black, and most of the dirt they brought in. I also sloped the ground and dug a small trench toward the drain opening, which is about 12 feet from the corner. I tried covering the area with mulch, but we had some fairly heavy rain the last couple of days. As you can see from the photo, the corner of our backyard is basically a waterway that wraps around the tree there. And I am stumped about what to do. Every time the people behind us run their sprinklers, we get a massive amount of water, so much that it runs all the way from our back fence down to the sidewalk in front of our house. I don't see how grass could ever grow in the back corners, and if it did, it would be a swampy mess that's impossible to mow. I'm thinking about putting pavers or rocks down, but I don't want to do anything that will slow down the water. Any ideas?