Newbie dealing with vines and clay!

Hi all,
I'm a newbie to this forum, and haven't really found many answers from the near hour of searching threads, so here goes...
Background, I'm a lazy gardener, its not how I want to spend my time. My garden is massive so low maintenance is key.
The two problems I have are;
1) The garden was up to 30 years ago a very small flood plain for a very old stream. The stream has been diverted and channeled. But I have really bad drainage, on digging a retainer wall there appears to be a 1' deep clay layer about 1' under the ground. My lawn has extensive liverwort, oh and frogs! I want to improve drainage, and am willing to raise the ground level about 6" if required. Was going to lay a new lawn on top, maybe???
2) My neighbours fence is hideous, its a concrete post/wooden panel job. But is bends and waves horizontally and vertically! I want to cover all 120' of it. I'm after a fast growing vine/bush that's evergreen, needs little pruning and limited to 2-3mtrs growth. It'll need to grow in the shade (on the near north side of the fence), and in boggy soil. If possible Id like a fruit bearing honey suckle, as I like to brew from the hedgerow!
Sorry, its info overload, but any help would be great.
Beefy

 

Hello and welcome

When you say there's a 1ft layer of clay about 1ft under the ground, do you mean its decent topsoil for the first 1ft, then 1ft of clay underneath? If it is, then that's normal. In fact I'd say its good (coming from someone who has always had to deal with heavy clay). Apart from the drainage problem obviously.

I'll let someone else come along to advise on drainage.

As for the climber to cover the fence, a fruit bearing honeysuckly you say? Well, there is a cultivar of honeysuckle that's been bred for its unusually large, apparently very juicy fruit. It's called Honeyberry. I've read of it but never tried it. In any case, you'll be waiting a long time for honeysuckle to cover a fence, and if the fence is already flapping about in the breeze, the extra weight of something like honeysuckle climbing on it will just demolish it, and then unfortunately you'll be the one that's liable for causing the damage. You could get round that by erecting your own fence along the length of it, but if you're going to do that, you may as well do a nice fence and then still put climbers along it, but have to worry less about how long the climbers take to mature.

 

When you find this fast growing evergreen shrub that doesn't need pruning, grows in the shade, likes boggy soil, and fruits well, I'm sure we would all like to know about it.

 

I'm not worried about the fence failing, its solid, just obviously erected without the use of a spirit level or even straight eye! The aim is to cover it, and I was a bit specific. My main hope was for something that can live in the damp shady area which was evergreen and low maintenance. Is a type of hedge like buxus okay?
And id I'm going to lay a new lawn over the old, would a 50mm layer of sand help drainage?
I'm no expert, just looking for a few pointers.
Many thanks

 

Box (buxus) will take shade, but it grows phenomenally slowly and in my humble opinion, it is the most nondescript, least exciting plant that ever evolved.

 

How about Yew Beefy? I must point out though that Yews, particularly their berries are very poisonous so not ideal if you have young children.

http://www.jacksonsnurseries.co.uk/taxus-baccata-fastigiata.html

This is my own young one, picture taken a couple of years ago.