Please help newbie with a garden design problem! Suggestions please!

[two tone]

Hi Craig,    I agree with Trigg as you are renting as you have said you can not rip concret up so make the best of what you can.     Also think about how long you are staying there, if your thinking of moving in the near future put your plans on hold.   Plus if you have a young family think of how they will need to get around out doors.

[ttrigg]

Craig: 1^st, Welcome to the forum. A bit more info in your "Bio" will help others help you (climate issues will dictate possible different fixes for some problems, especially with this one.) You don’t "own" so no modifications allowed. OK let’s have a look:

Cracked patio concrete: the chunks will continue to shift (speed dependant upon you weather conditions.) Anything you build on top of the cracked concrete will "shift and shatter" as the chunks move day by day/month by month (again climate dependant.)

Dirt area adjacent to patio too low below concrete and fills with water. I would recommend building here. Build an elevated layout.

1:  Drop some posts into the ground with "T" beams on top. Span between the posts and beams with good grade lumber. You could fill the entire interior of the system with more trackage or city scenes and such. You can cantilever over the top of a couple of feet of the patio for sidings or whatever.

2:  Use some "dry stack" retaining wall bricks. Bring the elevation above the level of the patio. Throw some topsoil inside the circle, drop in a preformed pond inside the layout area (any reason to build a bridge, OK.) Tamp the topsoil in layers as you go for maximum stability of the rails.

Both of these techniques are well documented on this forum, so I would recommend doing a bunch of reading from the older posts.

[kidzntoyz]

I have been running my LGB trains for several years but never on a permanent layout. I now have an area to use and I'll try to describe it as best I can. The first area is a 16x16 foot raised concrete patio slab. The concrete is old, cracked in several places, and not level or even. The second area is a 24x12 foot bare dirt area, adjacent to the concrete slab but between 12 and 16 inches LOWER. The dirt area gets very wet in the winter and running track right on it won't work. Here are the issues I would like help with. Issue 1) making the concrete slab more level. I was thinking of a border around the edges and filling with an inch or so of base rock (for leveling) and then some finer gravel over that. This would help with drainage also. Issue 2) Connecting the slab area to the dirt area. Should I just raise the dirt area until it's level with the concrete slab? I know this setup is kind of goofy, but it's all I've got. We are renting this house, so keep in mind that I really can't do any major renovations (like tear out the broken and cracked concrete slab!) Thank you for any and all suggestions. Craig