Hello,

Just introduce myself, My names Nathan. Im 22 years old and live with my girlfreind in Manchester. Moved into our house 3 years ago and never really gone to any great measures to sort the back garden out. However I now have two dogs and think its olny fair to make the back garden more usable for them and for ourselves.
The owner of the house before us hadn't done any work in the garden what so ever. He didnt even cut down the weeds from time to time. So all the soils very compact and the land is very un level. This comes from the sort of reeds that grow along with what clumps of grass i have left. The reeds are the sort that you find next to ponds, round in shape quite long and sharpened off towards the end turning from green to brown. These must have been growing for quite some time because im left with the base of these higher than the surrounding grass wich makes the ground un even. I am going to dig these out once ive cut back everything else. My mane concern is the drainage. When it rains the water just simply sits ontop of the grass doesnt move anywhere and is worse in places. After a few days of sun and the rain has gone. This is no good for me and I'm looking to solve this problem. The soil is very grey and feels really gritty than soily. If that makes sense?

Im thinking of digging a channel through the worse part of the problem and then going into the general direction of the standing water. Then ill layer the channel with sand followed by a pipe with holes in (Land Drain) i think they're called and peashingle ontop with a layer of topsoil ontop. Im thinking of tilting the pipe towards the house into the drain that the rain water falls into from my house.

As you can probably tell I'm no gardener, just need a little guidance then i'll be ok. Any ideas to sort this out or what i might be doing wrong?

Cheers
Nathan