Oasis,
Last year I moved into a house with a similar problem; in the winter large
puddles sitting on the lawn after rain - even though the garden slopes about
a metre. I found out that it was due to an underlying layer of impervious
clay that wash dished in the middle.

Forking holes in the clay or digging a soakaway was a waste of time since
the holes and soakaway filled with water and then did not soakaway through
the underlying impervious clay.

The solution was to make a french drain from the lowest point of the clay
(not the lowest level of the overlying soil) to a lower point. It is very
simple and well within the capabilities of an average gardener. See
http://www.pavingexpert.com/drain03.htm for details.

cheers

Davy

wrote in message
ups.com...

An Oasis wrote:
Wrote:
My lawn needs levelling out and re-turfing. Given that it's about 300
sq.metres, I estimate approx £600 to buy turf.

You need to be much more specific! It is impossible to quote with so
many unknown variables -

· Access
· Quality of topsoil
· Amount of levelling needed
· Once rotivated will the soil need de-stoning
· Type of turf e.g. are areas of the turf in shade or partial shade -
if yes then may need to use more than one type of turf...

I could yap on all day, but I'm sure that you get the idea.



Yes, thanks for the advice. I suppose we'll get a clearer picture when
the existing grass is killed off, as to the quality of the soil. But I
do know it's heavy clay based.

My concern is that we'll spend quite a bit of money correcting this,
and in a couple of years we'll get back to the same situation if the
soil starts breaking up and cracking. I think the garden currently has
very bad drainage. It's so bad that last winter we had a visible pool
of water around the middle of the garden. What are my options to
improve the drainage?