Creating a swale upslope and perpendicular to a Pond

Hi there fellow Permies!  I am entering year 3 on my food forest that I am building on an old horse pasture.  This spring I would like to get started on my pond (marked future pond on the drawing).  The pasture slopes gently from E to W, but there are existing low spots in the pasture that fill up with water and create ponding when we get a heavy rain event.  This ponding in the low areas can be quite deep in places (4-5").  Some of these low spots are in the food forest and near the vegetable garden and can cause some plants to sit in standing water and perish.  I was brainstorming the other day, and started wondering if I could negate this ponding by creating a N-S running swale upslope of the food forest, garden, and pond.  This swale could be shaped and graded so the swale water would be diverted into the pond during rain events.  Have any of you seen this design? I would appreciate any opinions as to if you think this would be a successful way to a) keep the food forest and garden from flooding during heavy rains, and b) creating a water pathway to help keep my pond full when we're not getting a lot of rain.    

I kind of did this...I'm doing it reverse order from you :)

I started experimenting along a hillside before I plant anything, and created a small pond which takes water from some swales (one of them is a road) around the horseshoe of a field above and to the east of it.

I know that a pic like you have would help visualize, and I'll try to get some photos and a contour map of my place up this weekend so you can see. When it really rains you can watch the water flow, it's crazy how much I could continue working on containing/slowing in those events, and I plan to!

What are the red lines for?
Why did you not look at the topography first and plant to that?

That would be great to see some photos/map!  Thanks Cole

Cole Tyler wrote:I kind of did this...I'm doing it reverse order from you :)

I started experimenting along a hillside before I plant anything, and created a small pond which takes water from some swales (one of them is a road) around the horseshoe of a field above and to the east of it.

I know that a pic like you have would help visualize, and I'll try to get some photos and a contour map of my place up this weekend so you can see. When it really rains you can watch the water flow, it's crazy how much I could continue working on containing/slowing in those events, and I plan to!

If you read my post, I think it would be obvious that the red line is the swale being diverted into the pond.

I'm not sure what you mean by looking at the topography first.  This is a pretty much flat horse pasture that gently slopes E to W.  

John C Daley wrote:What are the red lines for?
Why did you not look at the topography first and plant to that?

I see on Google Earth that the field slopes 3 feet in 165 yards from E to W across the pasture.  I have heard from a lot of locals that there is a blue marl layer several feet down that creates "perched" ponding when we get heavy rain.  

Joshua, the answers to my questions were not obvious, hence the questions.
It pays to be humble sometimes, if questions look out of place.
Does the 'ponding' occur where the proposed pond is to be located, or are earthworks required to create the pond and the swale [ in red lines like a sausage ], thus preventing the 'ponding'?
Basically water can be diverted anywhere within reason, if it slopes too much it can erode, your block does not seem to have that issue.

I take it the 'water pathway' in low rainfall periods is not an existing creek? Because there are issues with shifting creeks.

Heres some pics, imaging plantings eventually mixed among this.

Im working with the water over a "bowl" like several acres. Im sure some things will change, but basically water can be made to do just about anything taking into account the natural dips and rolls of the land and some trenching/subsoiling/swale building.

You can see the shorter more trench-like swale goes to a natural low, heavy water runoff area in the field to divert that flow to the pond.

Im far from knowing exactly what Im doing here, but the real pond will be downhill further from this eventually, and everything above it will only temporarily hold heavy rains and soak out ideally.

Thanks for sharing Cole.  I see your swales are right on contour.  Please keep me updated on the progress of your pond building endeavor!

Pics are of circled area