Moss and aerating / drainage and trees

Hi everyone

I'm new to this forum and gardening. Our garden is south facing and I live in U.K. near Manchester.

We have had a lot of rain recently. Usually when we have storms my garden gets flooded but this time its been the worst, maybe because 2 trees have had to be removed in summer.

I've read aerating will help with drainage, and plan to use a garden fork. I'm concerned I have a lot of moss, would it be ok to still aerate without removing it?

Where one tree was the level is pretty raised, I would like to put a tree that helps with drainage in the same area, would this be ok?
If there is any suggestions for which tree to plant or even shrubs/bushes, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks in advance

☺️

 

Hello Yellow Rose and welcome to Gardeners Corner. Gardens flooding etc is a constant headache. I can well understand your thought about planting a tree, in the hope that the tree will solve your problem. Sorry to be the barer of sad news. It wont. So much depends upon the degree of flooding. Sadly much of our tiny island is being subjected to flooding. I am of the opinion that you will need to take steps at some form of drainage. What kind/system relies upon the severity of the flooding. If for instance it is surface flooding. ie after a downpor, the area is covered in large puddles, or if long after a downour the No. You don't need to dig up most of your lawn. Soil drainage pipes are reasonably cheap and easy to apply. area remains underwater, this has to be considered. Simply spreading and raking in various aggregates, honsestly you are wasting your time and money. Planting atree and expecting that will solve the problem. Sorry NO. If the tree amages to survive, it will simply draw up some of the water, circulate through it's vascular system and the transpire it.

 

What Mike said.

Trees certainly do draw up water from the soil, but not at a rate which'll change your flooding problem. Most trees have deeper roots, so they won't clear the surface water faster than it can drain anyway. Some trees (notoriously ash) do have shallower roots, but that's as part of being an invasive plant which tries to kill off competition, so you don't really want them in your garden. And anyway, flooding mostly hits in winter or early spring when trees are dormant.

If you've got a lot of moss, I'd be wondering whether you've got drainage problems because your soil is compacted. Spiking is certainly a good start there. If you've got time and energy then starting again and digging over the whole thing would be even better, and you could build in field drains as Mike suggests. That's not a small job though.

Do kill the moss though. Grass needs soil to grow in, and if it's covered in moss then the grass won't spread into it. Some more grass seed over the top afterwards wouldn't go amiss either (and get yourself a couple of bags of topsoil to sprinkle over that, because grass seed does need to be covered to grow).

 

Drainage is the only solution and a Well sited in the right place will help....

 

Welcome to the forum.

I think it is interesting that the drainage issue has become more of a problem since the trees have been removed. While it is true as posted already that trees when first planted wont have a big effect on drainage they can when bigger and more established have an impact on soil structure, but if this helps depends on the type of drainage problem in your garden. My parents back garden had been just grass for a long time, being part of grazing land before the house was built and the soil was a type of clay. Digging in the soil it was obvious that the soil had a poor structure with only about 20cm of topsoil above yellow clay with a hard pan of iron about 30cm down. This bad structure led to water just sitting on the garden and not draining because of the poor soil structure. There was somewhere for the water to go to as there is a slight slope but compacted clay simply does not let water travel through it.

Having read about how to manage clay soil and having some lectures on the topic I was informed that helping the clay soil form peds or aggregates that allow air and water move through the soil can be important. Deep rooting plants like trees and shrubs encourage healthy living soil at greater depths than shallow rooted grass so over the long term trees and shrubs can improve drainage in clay soils. Organic material added to the soil and staying off the ground when it is waterlogged is also important. I put drains into my parents back garden but also planted pear, apple and cherry trees, a large bay laurel and lots of blackcurrant, raspberry, thorn-less blackberry and other deeper rooting plants that I felt would help improve the soil structure to a deeper depth than just grass. After a couple of years of the deeper rooting plants developing the drains I put in no longer spouted water when we had persistent rain as they did when first installed and the water was able to percolate through the soil and it did not become a soggy mess as it had done previously.

What trees and shrubs you should plant depends on what you like, what space is available and for how long the soil stays waterlogged. Looking around your area should give an indication of what can grow well in your own garden. I found the deep rooting plants listed above worked fine in my parent's garden but I was aiming for food producing plants which might not be your own priority. The important thing with picking a tree for your garden can be selecting one that will be a suitable size when fully grown so I've not enough information to give a good answer. Alder is very tolerant of waterlogged conditions but it is not commonly used as a garden tree and as long as the soil in your garden is not very waterlogged all year round you should have much more options. I like having moss in my garden as it has nice bright colour through winter and is supportive of wild life but grass lawn enthusiasts seem to dislike it. Just looked up what the RHS recommend for wet soils and the shrubs they list that I have found good are: pheasant berry, red stemmed dogwood and weigela.
Happy gardening!

 

Thank you for all the replies, your input is valued. Yeah I probably will get a few quotes for some proper drainage.

This is really interesting especially as I have been thinking of planting a Cherry tree. Did you plant one or more. I read something like it works better when planting more than 1. The other berries seem of intrest to me too. Will have a look into it.
The only thing is we may want to put a summerhouse in the future so unsure about planting a tree.

The water in the garden is gone the next day if it stops raining. Not sure if this would be bad for anything planted.
Thanks for all the suggestions, we have lots of space for planting stuff as. We have 2 shrubs at the back, and nothing in the beds to where most sun is.

 

I only planted one cherry in the back garden of my parents garden where the ground needed to be improved to allow it drain better but there were lots of other trees and shrubs I planted as well and I agree that if you are talking about improving an area, more trees and shrubs would be better at improving the soil structure over an area than just one. The full grown size is also important to look at. There are some cherry varieties that get much bigger than others. If you are talking about water that goes away once the rain stops then I think you might get away without investing in drains. That is not what I would describe as serious water logging and a range of plants can do fine in these temporarily wet soil situations. It is just when roots are sitting in water for a long time that some plant varieties will simply drown.

To give an idea of the amount of planting I did here is a link to a video clip showing much of the planting done in the area that had poor soil structure that led to it being waterlogged through winter and other times of the year with persistent rain.

 

Wow, just watched the video, that is a lot of planting you did, and so sweet of you may I add.
Can I ask where you are based? I see you have many vids up on your channel. The plants have done amazing, your parents must be pleased. ❤