no drainage in back garden

hi all!

bought a house in a new estate (and the developers have since gone bust) and there wasn't much love and care gone into the garden at the back! we're here 4 years now and the lawn has never been fully right, cracks during the summer and is now very very boggy due to poor drainage. i dug a few holes and it looks like about a foot down there is a layer of compacted stones (might've been from the heavy machinery). haven't done a proper water table test but i'm guessing that this isn't helping the situation. so if anyone can give me advice i'd gratefully accept whatever ideas you'd throw my my :D

its a north facing garden and the bit closest to the house only gets (slight) direct sunshine in the summer. the other thing is i'm now sure if the soil i have is clay or topsoil, i'm assuming if its clay then thsi wouldn't be the best for drainage either??

i've tried to attach some photos but looks like they're too big, will try another way if i can later.

thanks!

 

If it cracks in the summer and gets boggy over winter, then my guess is it's clay.

When you say its boggy, just how wet are we talking?

 

theres a bit of moss in places and its been drizzly here the last few days but the soil its very muddy, as if theres been heavy rain which there hasn't been in days. i went out a while ago and my shoe was going into the ground a couple of centimetres, very very muddy.

 

Sounds like its a bit beyond my limited expertise, but there are a couple of things I'd do if mine was like that. I should say, not everyone would agree with my strategy (I have a tendency for going a bit over the top).

You say virtually no part of the garden ever gets direct sunlight. Why is that? Is it shaded by tall hedges or something? What I'm getting at is, is it anything you have any control over? I.e. if it is hedges blocking the light, are they your hedges and can you cut them back a bit to let some sunshine in?

Apart from that, I'd start by digging the whole lot over once it dries out a bit when the weather warms up. Clay is great for holding nutrients. It is terrible for turning into a muddy mess in winter and rock hard in summer. It becomes extremely compacted, preventing surface water from draining away and making life difficult for your grass to send roots into. Digging the whole lot over to at least one spade depth will obviously loosen it up, enabling it to drain better. It will of course simply compact again within a few weeks, unless you work in loads of bulky organic matter. I used spent mushroom compost on mine, its about the cheapest option unless you can get something for free. That'll stop the clay from simply compacting again.

The trouble with my recommendation to dig the lot over, and the reason many would disagree, is twofold. You initially lose your lawn completely and have to either re-seed or turf it afterwards, and it is hard work, not just initially digging it over, but getting it nice and level again afterwards ready for the new lawn.

If you have a drainage problem that is significant enough that simply improving the drainage of your soil wont solve, then I don't know what to suggest. You could put a field drain in ('french drain' I think), but obviously the water has to go somewhere.

 

Sounds the same as my lawn which is on clay and at the moment is like a bog.

I'm not an expert by any means but have detailed below what I've learned through experience works on my lawns. I did mine yesterday, but should really have waited until late March.

First I scarified the lawn to get rid of any thatch and moss (I have a lot of moss in the front lawn which collects over winter, none in the back). I used a spring-tined rake, but I do intend to invest in a Wolf Garten scarifier for next time, because it is hard work.

Then I mowed it, more to hoover the mess up than anything else.

I then poked it full of holes with a gardening fork to aerate it.

Then I sprinkled over a mix of sharp sand and compost, then some grass seed on top, all of which I lightly raked over the top of the lawn.

Once the seed germinates, I'll leave it for a few weeks before mowing it.

 

Hi bungaro,

I am no expert, but I do remember that to get the right drainage would mean a BIG dig.

You could look over this: How to install a lawn drainage system

But it sounds like you need to go that little bit further.
Find the lowest point in the garden and dig a pit approx five yes five feet deep. Then infill one foot of this with cobbles or rough stones, followed by 10mm stone over the top. Dig out channels heading towards the pit from the high points fill them with pea shingle and cover the lot with sand.
Then back fill the garden with good top soil to a level and then grass over.

Costly YES, but that would be the way forward.

Sorry could not help further without burning your budget.

 

Hi there,i have a similar problem.My house was built around 10 years ago but the builders never done a good job of the back garden drainage.
Over the years i have turfed it twice and also put chips down(wife didn't like it because of the spiders that appeared ) but i'm back to grass again and the drainage is still a problem.
Its not a very big garden but the kids love to play in the summer and they end up with muddy feet unless its been really warm for a few days and the garden has dried out.
I have put some drainage in myself but that hasn't worked.
I have a steep hill behind my garden fence so i have built a wall and filled it in with soil and planted some trees so i would imagine that should soak up any water coming down from the hill.
I would be grateful for any advice on what kind of grass seed might help.

Thomas.

 

Unlikely any plants will drink enough water to solve a drainage problem - well, until they are reasonably mature at least.

Drainage would be the best bet. Not hard to install, but you will need to dig some trenches.

If the builders have just covered over all their rubble with a layer of topsoil (as is, I'm afraid, fairly typical) then you really need to sort that out otherwise it will never be right. They may also have severely compacted the subsoil, running over it with heavy machinery, and that would need to be cured too.

If that's the case it will need double digging - dig a trench, one spade's depth (so called "spit"), barrow the soil from the trench to the far end. This should be top soil, and you should see a different coloured layer below - Clay or a rock hard pan where the builders drove on it, or possibly rock or a number of different things. Hopefully its clay, possibly stuffed full of broken bricks and other detritus.

In the, now open, trench dig it over another spit depth. Don't mix that subsoil with the topsoil from the first spit. Take out all the bricks and other junk.

Dig the first spit from the second row into the trench from the first row. Dig over the sub-soil in the 2nd spit of the second row. Keep going until you get to the end, then put back the soil you barrowed from the beginning.

You could do the whole job with a mini digger (a 360 digger on tracks)- if you can get one into the garden? (Hire the biggest one you can get into your garden, small ones may struggle with the task, which means it then takes longer). Stand the digger at a starting position, work in an arc digging out all the first "spit" and piling it on your left (say). Then dig and "turn over" the 2nd spit. You'll have to remove all the broken bricks you find manually. You only want to loosen up the 2nd spit, so doesn't matter too much how you go about it - I just lift the digger bucket up high and let the contents go "plop" back again, but it needs to be reasonably level, otherwise you'll get it mixed with the topsoil later on.

Once you've dug over the "arc" of 2nd spit pick up the pile of topsoil (on your left) and put it back in the hole, and smooth it off a bit.

Then dig up the top spit on your left and stack in on your right (on top of what you just dug). Sort out the 2nd spit on your left, then put back the top soil (from the pile on your right).

Work backwards down the plot - you want to try to avoid driving on the freshly dug soil.

A mechanical digger will make it easy to dig a trench for a drainage pipe too, and to dig a socking big hole for a soak-away if you need one (i.e. you have nowhere lower that you can run the drainage pipe too). You can chuck all the broken bricks you found in the bottom of the soakaway hole, and fill it up with some gravel.

Some pictures on my blog in case it helps explain it a bit better - about 2/3rd the way down this page:
http://kgarden.wordpress.com/projects/exotic-garden/
Keep in mind that I wasn't levelling or anything, this was just "digging" the soil". I then dug a trench for some land drains (picture lower down the page). The drain is a 4" perforated plastic drainage pipe, it comes on a roll, stick it in the bottom of the trench and cover with gravel, then backfill the soil above.

Best site for info on drainage that I know of is:
http://www.pavingexpert.com/drain03.htm

 

Thanks Kristen for the quick reply and good advice.
I should have mentioned i plan on moving next year,this sound like a big job, i guess i will just have to make do for now and hope we get some good weather noth of the border this year.