Heavy clay soil waterlogged garden

I_have_spoken

My lawn was a marsh due to being on a slope, so water was always flowing down and keeping the clay saturated.

I went through the effort of laying in perforated pipes all around the beds, wrapped in weed fabric and laid into gravel, to capture the water and pipe it away, then relaid turf onto 5cm of grit.

Lawn is now free of moss and can be walked on regardless of how much rain there's been without getting muddy

moneyistooshorttomention

mr_megs wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. I really want a usable space for the kids to play in as we've just moved from a terraced with no garden and were looking forward to a nice lawn so I don't really want to do the bog garden.

moneyistooshorttomention, how much did u pay if u don't mind me asking.

From memory - for an area of around 400 square feet approximately = I can't recall the exact figure (got lost somewhere in my memory along with everything else I've had to spend on the house) but it was somewhere in the region of £1,000 to £2,000 and probably nearer the £2k mark. I think a lot of the cost was down to dumping existing soil (all in proper/official fashion - which I gather isnt cheap these days to do things in the way Councils require).

So:
= dig up and properly dispose of old soil (mini digger)
layer of "fabric", gravel, 2nd layer of "fabric"
- 2' depth of new topsoil

I figured 2' depth of soil would cover most things I would want to plant - ie not including trees.

SailorSam

I struggled with clay in the back garden of my last house for years, the way i got around it in the end was to sell up and move.

Grenage

My friend's garden sat under an inch of water when the weather was poor; he dug several large pits spaced around the garden, and filled with pea single and sand. He also dug out and replaced a few inches of soil with fresh topsoil and sand, then turfed.

mr_megs

I have spoken, did the grit get laid on top of the old turf and then u seeded it?

I'm interested on how you laid that wonderful lawn.