Sopping Wet back Garden

muttley-dps

Folks,

Moved into a new house during summer 2012. While I could see garden had been wet it was possible with some good weather that it would dry out. Lawn is old grass and reedy in places but possible to keep neat with the lawnmower

I initially was looking at sink holes because it's at the portion of lawn nearest the house it seemed worse so planned a number of these along this border. However after going down ~ 4.5' (length of the auger bit I had) it was apparent that after maybe a spades depth of topsoil all I've got is an impermeable blue clay layer all the way for the remaining 4'. Verified by filling the hole and seeing if it would seep away which it didn't.

As a result I went with drains. I put down 7 drains with a channel along the bottom leading to the storm drain. Drains are approximately 1' under the topsoil (rough chips, 4" wavin drainage pipe and covered with rough chips again).

Now I'd say this has made some improvement locally where the drains are but the rest of the garden is still sopping wet and a bit of a mud bath with weather lately. Given this is Ireland I cannot rely on 2 good weeks to dry out the lawn before I can let the baby out to play on it.

Going into the summer I'd like to be able to make another stab at this but not sure how best to proceed. Any thoughts welcome. I've a mockup of the garden layout attached.

Thanks in advance.

bbam

Two things spring to mind here.
1.
2012 was a damn wet year, I had 300%of the average rainfall in June. Moderate gardens became waterlogged, including my own. Currently nationwide the water table is very high hindering drainage. My advice to people who's garden is bad this year for the first time is to hold out and see how it goes. Drainage is hard work and expensive, only do it if it's really required.
2.
The type of soil you describe is practically impossible to drain dry ( I have 30 acres of it). French drains will prevent flooding thus allowing it to dry as good as is possible. But if you are on heavy clay soil of that depth then your options are limited, the structure just doesn't allow water to permeate through to any decent ammount.

ponddigger

hi, any photos of your lawn. jack

winnie the poo

I had this problem before. To be honest the drains will only work for the areas where they are. Clay is so bad that it wont drain in between the drains if you get me? and It certainly wont solve the problem for the whole garden. I think your only option is to rent a digger, or hire someone with a digger to remove all the clay and replace it with proper topsoil to a good depth..

muttley-dps

Thanks for the feedback folks.

Based on these it's as I thought, need to dig it out (would 1m depth suffice?), put some gravel in at the bottom, then probably sand and topsoil to allow better drainage.
What depths should I go with i) gravel ii) sand and iii) topsoil to allow for a typical irish summer?

Thanks in advance.

Colm R

Does the land behind your property continue uphill?

I had this problem last year in a new house I bought, and found in heavy rain a lot of water came in from the field behind.

I put a drain in, covered with large stones to the surface, which will never have clay put over it. This captures the water coming in to the back of the property, which I then piped directly to the storm drain near the house.

It means now the lawn in the middle of this only has to deal with the rain that falls on it.