"dapex" wrote in message
...

Hi all, I am new here and I have come in the hope of finding help with
my boggy garden. All winter my garden is pretty much out of bounds and
seems to be wet throught days after any rain, it never fllods but its
certanly bad enough to stop the kids being able to go and play in it.
The house is on a fairly new estate and everyones garden is as bad. It
does have a downward slope but the slope leads to a patio and so
putting drainage pipe is a bit trick and apart from that, after the
patio is a fence with a gravel board almost fully buried and then my
neighbours garden is lower than mine.

I have thought about hiring a petrol post hole digger and going 2 to 3
ft down every few feet and then filling the holes in with thick gravel,
do you think this would help? I think the biggest problem is that the
soil is very thick and clay based....

I cant really affors to spend the money on gravel and a skip if it wotn
help much so if you can offer any advice then please feel free.

I know I can use a garden fork and make hols in my lawn and fill with
sharp sand but that does seem a very slow and labourios job in all
honesty and I imagine very messey with sand ending up alll over the
lawn??

Cheers in advance for any help you can give

If you're on a clay subsoil with loads of builders debris and crap in the
ground no amount of additional drainage within a reasonable cost is going to
alleviate the problem.

One way of sorting the problem for growing veg etc is to add a raised bed or
two using some 9" X 3" timbers ( Or scaffold boards if the timber is too
expensive) to make a large frame, say 12' X 6' or so. At ground level turn
the soil over as deep as you can and add around a 50% mix of pea shingle and
sharp sand to a depth of around half your turned over depth, mix well. The
water should find a level under your growing area and drain as well as it
can to clay subsoil level.
Adding a membrane ( Woven polypropylene will be fine. You could use clean
builders tonne sand bags) and then filling the remainder of the depth of the
boards with a loam based peat free soil will give enough depth and area for
veg growing while preventing weed coming up from underneath and allowing the
water to soak in.
Repeat as you feel fit at whatever size to create a series of raised beds
with gravel path between to allow some drainage and a place to walk safely.
The rest of the area could be re turfed, but don't hold out much hope for a
Wembley type grass area though ;-)