This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.
Help with soggy garden
susananwms
Posts: 213
After removing vast amounts of concrete, stone and building material then adding topsoil and turfing I am left with a boggy mess. Admittedly we have been having torrential rain for most of the winter but I think i have caused a lot of it by removing what seemed like a buried small town at the time! Am not sure what I can do as I have no back entrance. There is wasteland to the side which was intended for house building but has been abandoned, sadly the owner has refused permission to allow materials be brought in that way. Previously everything came through the house but that was before new kitchen and floors were laid Would making small holes all over and adding grit or sand help. Am at my wits end and totally out of my depth here
0
Posts
Their is another current thread called Drainage which is covering the same topic. It is a shame you have already added soil & turf, but drainage pipes would seem to be the only answer. As several of us have said on the other thread, the only thing is you need somewhere for the water to go to. It either has to go to an existing surface water drain, stream, or you create a soakaway which is simply a rubble filled pit at the lowest point where they water can go temporarily and then slowly leach into the surrounding subsoil over a period of days. A lot depends on the slope of the ground and what your subsoil is made of, sounds as though you have some kind of impervious layer lower down, drilling holes down through it with an auger & looking at what you pull out may help you decide.
I agree with IainR above ... and in the meantime try to stay off the garden while it's wet ... inevitably the work you've done will have damaged the structure of the soil which will be contributing to the poor drainage ... it needs to recover without having people walking on it in the wet.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Thanks for your replies I will look at the other thread but thanks for your suggestions so far, drainage area to offload to shouldnt be a problem as it is on a downward slant and just opens out into a kind of valley at end of garden and the soil is quite good, going by what other people working in the garden have said...to me it just looked like black earth
Some parts of the country have had flooding this year. My own garden, which hasn't is so wet that water rises round your feet when you step on it. Don't panic yet and don't try to do any work on it until you are able to assess it in more normal circumstances. As Dove says, it needs to recover and you may find that it settles down. Do you know how wet it was before you removed all the rubbish? Take it slowly and just keep off the ground as much as possible, now.