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Help! Waterlogged Ground
simon birch
Posts: 4
Evening All,
I'm wanting to plant a 10m long hedge, problem is that the ground is heavy clay + totally waterlogged despite the dry spell. If I dig the ground the hole made by the spade soon fills with water.
I know I should only plant the likes of alder and willow but can I plant in what is in effect water?
Is the only solution to build a raised bed + throw in loads of compost with the aim of letting the roots of new plants take hold above the water line?
Drainage would be costly and preferably avoided.
All suggestions welcomed.
Thanks
0
Posts
What type of garden have you got overall Simon? If we knew your style it will be easier to help choose some suitable trees etc for this water logged spot
I was thinking gunnera, not a tree but grows massive! Maybe you could have a bog garden type design for that bed? Like the lost gardens of helligan in Cornwall? Just thinking aloud .......
Thanks for getting back to me Beaus - my plan is to work with the conditions I've got + aim for a wildlife friendly bog garden. It's just that I'm not sure about planting directly into such waterlogged ground.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=356
This looks good For all the info you should need
I've known alder to be perfectly happy in waterlogged clay, if it's given some organic matter around the roots to get it going.
It sounds like a great project - I hope you'll keep us supplied with photos of the progress
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
You could dig a shallow ditch and heap the soil to one side as you go, creating a long mound. Plant into that mound with suitable water loving species (Cornus is one that springs to mind). At least they'll be sitting with their roots above water long enough to get established.
Simon - we were in a similar position ourselves when we moved to our present house which was in a very exposed location. We'd never gardened on clay before and this was, like yours, thick, heavy yellow clay. It's a nightmare in summer when it's like concrete and in winter, you can't extract your spade from the glue-like clay!
We have a couple of acres so I had a guy come in with a digger and cut two parallel trenches (4ft apart & 15" deep) around three of our borders. We then planted a mixed double thickness hedge. Most of the plants were bought from a nursery in Kent, where hedging plants around 3 ft high were very reasonably priced when bought by the dozen. Backfilled the trenches with a mix of compost and the excavated soil and staked any trees (we put in a few poplars, conifers and acacias). We planted a wide variety of hedging plants - green & purple beech, photinia, eleagnus, laurel, mahonia, several viburnums (particularly v. tinus), hornbeam, guelder rose, field maple, wayfaring tree, pyracanthus and robinia pseudoacacia. Apart from losing a couple of poplars over 7 years, all the other plants have done wonderfully! I really wouldn't have believed that this awful yellow clay could be so good for plants. I think you'll find that any of the above named plants will love your wet clay. Good luck!
Hiya I had a similar problem a few years ago planted a row of BLACK ALDER similar ground and very wet. Looks really nice in summer with black leaves and pale pink flowers. Really hardy if you prune right back in winter they come back double the next year.