Waterlogged garden - help required

Hi, our grass was laid on a bed of clay by the housebuilder - all the houses on the estate were the same. This has resulted in a sodden water retaining nightmare of a garden. Could anyone offer solutions for this problem. Thanks. :rolleyes:

 

If you want to keep the lawn you will have to put in a lot of fork holes and brush in sharp sand, otherwise you need to dig in as much organic stuff(horse manure etc) and grit into as your back will take. Good news:- clay is usually neutral to acid so you can grow azaleas pieris and acers, roses like clay too.

 

Hi revin helen - thanks for the reply. Is that likely to be sufficient, or will drainage also be required for the garden. At the moment, if there were to be no more rainfall, then it will still take absolutely weeks for the garden to dry out - it really is like a big water retaining sponge.

 

You may want to consider land drains. Check out the link below (it's a brill site - I use it all the time!)

http://www.pavingexpert.com/drain03.htm

 

Thanks Bayleaf. Thats terrific and i'll have a good read of it. Right now i'm really trying to get my head round how best to solve this problem - at times i feel like i'm flogging a dead horse and that bulldozing the garden is the only solution. It does however appear that there is slight hope for recovering a waterlogged clay garden and so i'll likely try the sharp sand method whilst reading up on drainage. If anyone else has had this problem then any shortcut to your remedy will be greatly appreciated.

 

Hi there - my present garden is clay, as was the one before it and I wouldn't change it for the worlds. The plants love it, and their roots help the frost, added organic matter, shingle etc break that sticky yellow stuff into something quite decent. With a new house, the builders will have compacted it down which won't have helped the drainage one little bit. The sooner you uncompact it the better.

If you want to keep the grass then as Revin says, you will need to airate it with a fork (dig the fork in, and then wiggle, leaving holes and repeat), and add plenty of lawn sand and brush into the holes. You will probably need to repeat several times this year. .

 

You can hire corers like thy use on golf courses etc. Im not sure of the cost but its worth trying to find out as it would save your back a bit. Once you have cored its the same routine of brushing in sand. Good luck.

 

Hi Fran and Mrs Cloudy, thanks for your help - i'll find out about corers for sure and i'll definately be going down the path of uncompacting the garden. Thanks again.