An understanding of the hydraulic characteristics in the compound channel with vegetation is important in designing stream restorations or managing the floodplain. A laboratory flume of 16 m long and 0.8 m wide was used for analysis of the hydraulic characteristics in the single section channel and the compound channel with artificial vegetation. Slope of experimental channel is 0.5 %. Discharges are ranged from $0.2;m^3/s;to;$0.4;m^3/s$. The experiments were done by changing water depth ratio, vegetation density and vegetation location. When water depth ratio in the single section channel with vegetation increase up to 3.5, the results showed that the increment of water depth due to vegetation may be ignored in practice. The maximum increment of water depth was measured up to 6 % in the compound channel with vegetation and the range of velocities increment in the low flow channel was from 25 % to 85 % compared with section average velocities. As the vegetation densities increase and water depth ratios decrease, the velocity of the low flow channel increased. The range of roughness coefficients in the vegetated reaches were estimated from 0.055 to 0.14 in the single section channel and from 0.063 to 0.085 in the compound channel using HEC-RAS and RMA-2 model.