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Boggy garden question

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

Dave

Quote:

Originally Posted by dapex

Hi Dave

Is it your first year in the property? Personally I'd wait - every garden we have been in over the last few months has been pretty wet. I don't know enough details to give you good advice, however, assuming an average I would save your time and money. It has been a wet few months in the northwest, the same where you are?

Boggy garden question

An Oasis wrote:
dapex Wrote:
Hi all, I am new here and I have come in the hope of finding help with
my boggy garden.

Hello Dave,

Yes, probably a good idea to wait and see. My garden has been really
'soggy' this winter, too.

However, one thing I do experience all the time with new builds (as a
garden designer) is the dumping of rubble, old cement bags, broken
bricks and other builders' detritus in the garden. This is common
practice and drives me nuts. I have just moved into a converted chapel,
built in 1860, but the guys who did the conversion have ruined the
garden and I am spending ages getting all the rubbish out so I can grow
my veg etc. All this detritus will affect the drainage, of course. You
might want to do a little bit of digging to find out if this is your
problem. It wouldn't surprise me. But if it's not, then at least you can
eliminate this. I once had a customer whose lawn refused to grow
properly and they asked for my help. After half an hour's investigative
probing it transpired that there was a concrete patio six inches
underneath it!

Boggy garden question

"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 ;-)

Boggy garden question

On Feb 4, 5:50 pm, "Robbo" wrote:

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.

I agree, the only real way is to replace the boggy stuff with a more
stable substance. Even a few inches will help but it mustbe able to
drain away which it would by the sound of it as you have a slope and
you're higher than neighbouring properties.

If you fill holes with gravel you'll end up with wet gravel filled
holes.

Cheers for all the info, last year we dug a big section of our garden to level an area for a patio and I was surprised as we found no builders waste at all so I think i may be OK on that front, maybe as said gardens are just partiulr boggy at present and I will live with it. Just for info this is my 7th year in the house and its always been as bad.

I see that the garden factory catalogue are doing a hollow time areaotr for £15, I may buy that to see is it helps at all and then try to get rid of any moss and reseed with grass..

Quote:

Originally Posted by adder1969 (Post 687902)

Boggy garden question

On Feb 2, 3:04 pm, dapex wrote:
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

Dave

--
dapex

Having a similar problem, I have finally decided, it is a drain or
accept it, Wet and soggy in winter but ok in summer.
Peter.