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Woodenchips
Posts: 1
Hi,
We had a tree in the middle of our garden which had pretty much died and the other night it blew over. From roughly the tree to the back of the garden is clay soil and the back of our garden floods when we heavy rain.
The problem I have is now is that we have a fairly big hole in the middle of the garden which had a fair amount of water in it.
Whats' the best thing to fill the hole in with, would it be sand, compost and top soil?
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I'm on heavy clay too and I've found if you fill a hole with gritty free draining material, all that happens is all the rain finds its way into and and can't drain out into the heavier soil. Could you perhaps create a raised bed? even 6" / 150mm can make all the difference
I used to garden on heavy clay - what I would do is wait until the weather is better and there's little water in the hole - possibly even late spring early summer, then I would make the hole quite a bit bigger to start with, widening it so that it's like a deep saucer - then mix the soil/clay you've dug out with some good topsoil and grit and use this to back fill the hole - keep a heap of your backfill material with a tarpaulin over it as the soil in the hole will sink over the first year or so and require topping up every so often for a while.
If you want to grass the area over you'll have to keep topping up and letting the soil settle until the sinking stops and the area can be sown or turfed. However if you want a flower bed or another tree obviously you don't have to worry so much about getting the area level.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.