Hi Folks,

I just joined the forum today so thought I'd pop on to say hi. I've recently finished building a new house which I'm over the moon with. Unfortunately, my house with a footprint of 93 square metres is sitting on a building site of 870 square metres which I want to change in to a lovely garden. However, the house has swallowed most of my money and my fingers are decidedly un-green!! Little bits at a time though.

Firstly, I'm based in Orkney so you can rest assured that my garden will get plenty of wind and rain. The soil seems to be a thin layer of topsoil with some horrible wet, sticky clay beneath. At the weekend I hired a mini-excavator and took out the bottom of my sloping back garden. My intention is to increase the width of the path at the back of the house by 200% to create a nice patio. I also plan to hold the garden back with a retaining wall at about 2-3 feet high. I'll decide on the final height when I see it. I'm going to be doing all the work myself which I'm quite looking forward to.

The last thing I paid my builder to do was to build a perimeter wall around my land. He did a top job and it's looking amazing. Unfortunately, as my house is on a slope, the water has really started gathering at the back of the wall round the front of my house. Not good!! So, I'm going to have to think about putting in some drainage. I was considering just digging a sump and filling it with hardcore but I'm not sure if that's going to be enough. I may have to connect a perforated pipe to the surface drain connected to the SUDS. More than likely, I'll end up having to do the same with the retaining wall at the back.

My aim is to have grass in this year so I'm up against it trying to fit everything in with a full time job and dark evenings. Not to mention the awful weather.

Is it worth me digging in the sticky clay while it's still soaking wet? I need to put in a base for my patio. Will sand alone be sufficient for that or so I really need hardcore? I'm sure I'll have loads of questions throughout my adventure but I'm in it for the longhaul so am looking forward to the challenges.