Hi all

I'm after some advice on the best way to prepare heavy clay soil for turfing.

The back garden is approx 36ft wide (level in this direction), and 30ft long - sloping downhill away from the house (overall approx 2ft drop). Over the last 4-5 weekends I've been levelling it into terraces, and now it looks like this (starting nearest the house):-

- First 6ft will eventually be paved
- then 1ft drop onto lawn area (will eventually have a retaining wall)
- Approx 15ft of lawn
- further 1ft drop onto barked area

I've got the lawn area level, but in the process I've dug out most of the topsoil from the "high part" nearest the house, and used it to fill up the "low part" of the lawn area to get it level. Where I've removed this topsoil I've hit red/brown clay, which runs in a strip the full width of the garden - approx 1-2ft wide at one end, but more like 4 ft once you reach the other end. As you move away from the house the clay layer slopes down, so the topsoil therefore gets deeper and is probably a foot deep at the far end of the lawn area.
I've spread 2-3 inches of topsoil back over the clay, but after any rain we see a lot of small puddles on this area of the ground, and walking on it feels like quicksand in places.

I've read various articles on what's best, these include:

- rotavating in grit sand, but needs huge amounts to make a difference - £££s!
- create soakaways, but I've read that they silt up and aren't worth the effort
- just turf it, then aerate and topdress with sand each year
- spread 2 inches of "turfing sand" on the ground then lay turf onto that (never found out what turfing sand is!)

I also read an article on this site about putting drainage along the top edge of the lawn to stop water from higher ground ever reaching it in the first place. This makes sense, but will it help in my situation? The highest terrace (nearest the house) is only 6ft wide, so I can't see there being that much water coming from up there? If I do go with this drainage idea, what sort of drain is best?

After the jubilation of finishing the garden levelling (by hand!), I'm starting to get disheartened after seeing it turn into mush with the recent rain! Or am I worrying unnecessarily - we wouldn't go out into the garden at this time of year? We've only been in the house a few months so what would we expect in the summer - will we have the opposite problem of having the ground turn to concrete instead?


So many questions! Thanks in advance

Andy