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High table water - build over it?

kirsty.d.moorekirsty.d.moore Posts: 7
edited March 2022 in Problem solving
The bottom part of our garden essentially floods when it rains a lot due to the water table level (we are next to a brook). Unlike neighbours who have successfully built french drain systems and raised their gardens, we cannot afford to do this at present (the area of the lower garden is at least 80ft). In the meantime, I was wondering about how to try to make at least some of the garden accessible next winter by perhaps laying two wooden palettes on top of each other (for maybe half of the 80ft) and then layering actual turf on top. Am I completely naive and the grass would never find roots? Open to ideas as another winter losing half the garden to a flood/bog is miserable, especially as we have kids. Note: it's nothing the council want to know about so we are very much on our own. Thank you, from a novice gardener. Thr picture is of the lower garden. Top part isn’t affected.

Posts

  • ButtercupdaysButtercupdays Posts: 4,546
    Your pallet idea wouldn't work and could be downright dangerous if someone slipped and fell into the water!
    Water will always find its own level. If your land is low-lying your only options are:
    to raise the overall level of your soil -  very hard work and prohibitably expensive
    Build a dam to exclude the water (if possible!) - ditto
    Or, learn to live with it and invest in good wellies! Monty Don manages to have a successful garden with the same problem.  If the water is usually fairly shallow, you could have a bog garden, there are some sensational bog plants available.
  • kirsty.d.moorekirsty.d.moore Posts: 7
    Thanks Buttercup. You're totally right about the slip hazard, I hadn't thought of that woth palletsanc it could be sk danerous! I'll investigate Monty Don and ideas for bog Gardens. Very helpful, thanks! 
  • FireFire Posts: 19,096
    How deep does the water get in the area pictured?
  • kirsty.d.moorekirsty.d.moore Posts: 7
    About 30cm high at its worst.
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    I used go have a garden with a similar situation ... we were not allowed to prevent the stream overflowing onto our garden as this could have worsened the flooding further downstream where there were homes nearer to the banks.  We and our neighbours just accepted that there were pluses and minuses to living close to a stream ... flooding the garden in the winter was a minus, but we planted that end of the garden with shrubs such as cornus and osiersthat could cope with the conditions, and there were wildflowers that grew along the banks, and we enjoyed the wildlife the stream and the natural habitat brought to our garden.  It was when my daughter @WonkyWomble was small ... she loved that garden ... it was where she first got interested in plants and wildlife, and now she's a professional gardener.   :)

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • FairygirlFairygirl Posts: 55,117
    You could always get a professionally built bridge, and have a Claude Monet moment... ;)

    A bog garden wouldn't work if it's under that depth of water. a couple of inches would be very different from a foot.
    If it was there permanently, you could have a natural pond, but most bog plants wouldn't cope well with being submerged at that depth for long periods, so it would depend on the length of time it had water there, and whether you could get bog plants and marginals to thrive. It might need to be marginal pond plants - flag irises etc, which can manage fine with just wet ground if the level decreases for long periods.  :)
    It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....



    I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
  • ButtercupdaysButtercupdays Posts: 4,546
    I would definitely recommend some bog garden plants then, the puddles in some of our gateways get deeper!.
    We live on a steep hillside in a rainy area. A large chunk of the garden is the boggy triangle (ish!) bounded on one side by the bank of the dam that helps to control water run off from the fields above, and on the other 2 sides by the streams that this creates.
    There was originally a sequence of 4 dams that created ponds of diminishing size. Only 2 are still ponds. The first is fairly well silted up and is used as a bog garden, with a small stream running through it, and the third was sufficiently filled in to make a reasonable patch of grass. (Nothing here merits the title 'lawn'!) No's 2 &4 make attractive ponds, the last of quite substantial size with an equally substantial dam which encloses a small natural valley.
    In all the years I have lived here I have never been able to walk on the triangle or in anyway garden it, as it is just too wet and I sink in too far. Yet for most of the year it looks lovely, with marsh marigolds,  blue bugle,  willow herbs, meadow sweet, red campion, yelllow flag iris and stately 'bulrushes' among other things, with scarlet stemmed dogwoods on the edges.  I let nature do the work and just enjoy it
    The only thing for which I can claim any responsibility is a couple of wild angelica plants. I grew one plant a few years back and a seed or two has escaped and travelled downstream as far as the triangle. It is a native plant so I don't feel guilty :)
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    A great deal depends on how long the plants are under water ... if the floods only last for a few days or a week then most bog plants  and the shrubs I mentionedwill cope perfectly fine ... however if the floods go on for weeks then they'll find it a lot harder to survive being submerged for that length of time. 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





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