HELP - waterlogged garden

Seriously though, if you wanted to throw a few bob at it, you can get a soakaway for a reasonable price.

http://www.auer-shop.co.uk/en/rainw...}&adtype=pla&gclid=CPX1j_eCv7kCFbIPtAodlF0ApA


You bury that and cover it. You could also run a perforated pipe around the garden and have that leading to the soakaway.

Here's one I installed a few years ago to get the water away from a house.

 

just moved in, so no chance of moving lol - not unless it comes into the house.

must admit, its got worse since we started doing the garden, yet done nothing to it except cut down overgrown plants lol

wife wants a garden company toi comje and have a look, but im gonna remove slaps before that happens

 

I think you'll be wasting good money with a garden company Lynx. When I needed a new soak away dug in a previous garden I used a 'Groundworkers' firm. They know more about drainage and cheaper too.

 

If you go the soakaway route you might want to consider a sump & pump too.

Make a big hole for the soakaway, before filling it with rubble put some concrete pipes (about 9" diameter) vertically in the hole. Just butt-joint them, don't cement them or anything like that. You need a diameter large enough that you can get a sump pump into - look for a sump pump that has the pipe outlet on the top, not on a side nozzle, as they are narrower. If it has a float switch on it you can leave it in there, and plumb / wire it in permanently, otherwise just put it in when you have heavy rain. Look for a pipe diameter that will take a circular manhole cover. Backfill around the pipe with rubble / gravel. When necessary pump into the drain that the downpipes connect to.

Cutting the plants down will probably have made things worse, temporarily, as when they were bigger they would have drunk more water. But if you've only recently moved in then its probably just that you haven't seen many occasions when it has rained hard. The concrete covering the garden won't help either, soil that is dug and cultivated will drain better than a hard packed surface. Don't rely on plants to drink the water ... they won't deal with a flash flood, and anyway it needs mature trees to drink that much, not young plants, sadly.