Field-scale flow and transport studies are frequently conducted to assess and quantify a variety of environmental and agricultural scenarios. The utility of field-scale flow and transport studies, however, is frequently limited by our inability to characterize the heterogeneous distribution of hydraulic properties at these sites. We utilized both “hard” and “soft” data in conjunction with pedotransfer functions, geostatistical algorithms, and numerical modeling to characterize the hydraulic properties of the vadose zone at two 5x5 m field plots. Hard data was used to quantify the magnitude of the hydraulic properties (relationships between water pressure, water content, and hydraulic conductivity) at various locations in this plot and included laboratory and field measurements of the hydraulic properties from undisturbed cores and the instantaneous profile method, respectively. More abundant soft data included inductive electromagnetic readings, approximate particle size distribution information and pictures of soil profiles was used to quantify heterogeneity on this plot using geostatistical algorithms. Published pedotransfer functions were used to predict hydraulic properties from the particle size distribution information. The transport of potassium bromide, a representative conservative tracer, during steady-state water infiltration was studied. Numerical modeling of the tracer and redistribution experiments was used to verify our measurements of field-scale hydraulic properties and to refine our conceptual model of the vertical and lateral flow at this site. Good agreement between simulated and measured water contents, water pressure heads and bromide concentrations were obtained, indicating that field-scale hydraulic properties have been accurately quantified at this site. The novelty of this work consists of integrating all of the hard and soft data to characterize the field-site and its verification during controlled field experiments.