Garden Drainage

The_Shotz

Hi everyone,

I am looking for ways to improve the drainage of my back garden. The grass has been established for 6 years so I am not looking at digging it up and starting it over.

Would spiking it improve the drainage, with an aerator. Once it is spiked would spreading sand improve the drainage or something else, if not what would people recommend or any other ideas would be great, complete amateur here who loves the garden.

greasepalm

yes spiking and sand helps in drainage of lawns,dont use builders sand as i got it from the garden centres think it was sharp sand?

dazed+confused

Drainage has to be sorted from the bottom up, there's very little you can do without at least digging a trench through the worst affected area and laying some drainage pipe.

Roselm

Another poster with more experience may be able to critique my suggestion...! :
If your garden is large I wonder could you plant a tree that doesn't mind/likes having wet feet.Trees consume a huge amount of water but
I'm not sure if this would work in Winter as I assume trees take up very little water when they aren't in leaf?

Meningate

Depends on area and surrounding levels but you don't need to wreck your lawn to put in some basic land drain. If you dig a row of sods up the width of your shovel and save. Then dig down twelve inches and lay a length of two and a half inch downspout cut with lots of slots made with a small whizzer. Fill half way with 20mm gravel and top up with soil. Tamp down well and replace your sods so they protrude an inch, they'll soon settle back level. Lay pipes in a y format in the middle of the wet area, one row straight with branches off both sides every ten feet. Branches only need to go two thirds of the distance between middle and edge of lawn. Block up ends with a brick or tile to stop pipe filling with soil. Slope pipes down from highest point at a rate of one inch fall in forty feet.
The lowest point is where you have to get rid of your water. How depends again on where you are, a nearby stream, or dig a soak away. You must NOT connect this into a foul water drain or chess pit.

gsi300024v

Little and often would help, spike it, add sand, repeat. There are not many things you'd do once and boom drained garden forever more, even drains with pipe etc have a shelf life. you'd not need to dig up the whole garden to put in drainage. just slice the sods you cut and put back in on top. you'd hardly notice it in a month or tow once growing starts again.
Takes me back to college days. 6 inch wide holes 150mm, 100mm drain pipe, pea gravel 6 to 9 mm, you want the pea gravel under the pipe and all around it, then sand on top maybe 2 inches, you could put peat and seed on the very top. this would help drainage even more than putting the sod back down.
There are air devices too, they send a spike down into the ground and fire out a shot of compressed air, good to reverse compaction. Robin Dagger was the name of one, not sure where you'd hire one.
anything at all to get more air into the ground too will help.

angeldaisy

Sorry to hijack your thread

Drainage is a problem here as well, but it's mostly caused by the surrounding fields being waterlogged which then floods into my garden.

I'm not sure that digging drainage would work as there's no where for it to drain to.
What could be a solution in that instance?

gsi300024v

Make your garden higher than surrounding land.
I've seen it done. Big job, you'd be fighting a fairly had battle otherwise. But how often is your garden like that, it's probably grand most of the year, I'd not be trying to fix problems that only happen when half the country is flooded.
Maybe you could put in a water feature at the lowest point? Gather up the water and possible have a pipe and pump to pump away the extra un wanted water into a drain.

The_Shotz

Thanks for all the replies and advice! I don't have the problem of Water lodging (I.e puddles), it can just get fairly soft and mucky in parts.

Initially I am going to spike it and brush in sand as well as over seeding and see if that helps. Of not I'll look into the pipe solution.

gsi300024v

just keep it up, few times a year will be need, once won't do much. little and often like how they do on a golf course.

The_Shotz

The_Shotz wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies and advice! I don't have the problem of Water lodging (I.e puddles), it can just get fairly soft and mucky in parts.

Initially I am going to spike it and brush in sand as well as over seeding and see if that helps. Of not I'll look into the pipe solution.

How'd you get on last year?