Levelling clay soil garden
louisa_croft
Posts: 2
Dear All
I am relatively new to gardening and have never posted before so apologies if this question has appeared somewhere else previously.
We have a clay soil back garden which spends half of the year boggy or water logged. We are currently having building work done and the builders are levelling the garden for us (it slopes down to the house and down from the right hand boundary) and laying grass seed.
The soil has always been very boggy after rain and in places this summer has cracked.
Whilst the garden is being levelled should we put some form of drainage in and what is the best way of doing this? We don't have a massive budget for it so I'm not sure laying pipes is an option. My fear is that if the garden is completely flat it won't drain at all!
Any ideas would be most welcomed!
Thanks
Posts
You might be better to not put grass seed down just yet. Chances are the builders will leave you with fairly heavily compacted soil, which, with clay, is hard work to turn into a decent lawn. Might be better to leave it unseeded and then, when the builders are gone and if you can hit that sweet spot that clay has (usually two days maximum in each season), when it's damp but not sodden, hire a rotivator, get some bulky cheap mulch/soil improver like mushroom compost and rotivate it in. Leave the surface roughed up. Frost will break down clay better than anything else. Then in spring rake it over and then seed it.
That does mean leaving a muddy wallow all winter though which may not be feasible.
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
We had virtually exactly the same scenario, including major building work in our steeply terracd, clay garden. We put some pipes in, a horrible job, and opted for a weed suppressing membrane covered with gravel, intrerspersed with stepping stones. Not as pretty as grass but for us the best way of coping with the clay.
Louisa,
Just so we can get an idea of how big a job you might have, could you tell us the size of the garden.
Yes of course! We have a corner plot so the garden wraps around the side of the house but most of it is to the back of the house. It's about 200sqm.
I'm not sure we can wait till Spring as we have 3 small children who would probably love playing in the mud but....!
Louisa
hi louise_croft life does not always let you do things when the times are best, the ground will be hard to prep when wet and sticky and you won't be doing the ground any favours, but 3 little ones running around, I'd wait for a couple of dry days prep the ground the best you can and lay Turf, its got more chance of taking where seed might sit their and rot, this is the best time of the year through to next spring to lay turf.