Soggy lawn

[dairich]

A corner of my lawn (about 2 m.sq. is badly drained (& shaded). It ends at a 20cm. step down to a path. What can I do?

[The Natural Philosopher]

If the subsoil is permeble, get a bulb planter and remove deep 'cores' and fill with sand.

Then put the top of the core back.

If the subsoil itself is staurated, then the whole area needs to be drained and raised.

What can and has worked for me is to strip the surface turves, lay a couple of inches of sand, and put them back.

Now the water will run through the sand..the question of course is where it will end up...

If you want to properly drain a whole flat area, its really down to ripping it all up, laing in perforated pipes and gravel and then rebuilding the soil over the top...

We ghave really compromised by simply raising beds adnd paths, - thsoe with criushed limestonme - and letting te grass grow back. The alwn is sodden in witerm, but we dont have to walk on it any more!

Once summer comes, the tree roots suck the bastard dry.

[OG]

Is it a modern house (

[Stuart Noble]

They spent months doing this in our local park and only succeeded in moving the soggy bits to an adjoining area

[nightjar]

I would plant the area with water loving plants, like bamboo or hydrangeas or turn it into a marsh plant area. My next-door neighbour spent ages trying to deal with a 'badly drained' bit of lawn before discovering it was the outlet for a natural spring.

Colin Bignell

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well that is water for you. It has to end up SOMEWHERE.

People have forgotten what ditches are FOR.

To take water from where its not wanted, to where it is.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The problem with that, Colin, is most of them do bugger all in winter.

Willow - especially weeping willow - will dry a 100 square meters of ground..in summer..

Or did you mean 'make a bog garden out of it'

[nightjar]

I don't normally expect my bamboo area to do much at any time, other than stand there and whisper in the wind.

It will also, IME, add a few tens of thousands of pounds in ground work to anything you want to build within about 10 metres of it.

That is another way to say 'turn it into a marsh plant area'.

Colin Bignell

[The Natural Philosopher]

Er noi. It will add tens of thousands to anything that is *already built with inedequate foundatins*, but once you have the digger in site, going down an extra half meter is not expebnsive either in diggertime or concrete.

The issue being get rid of the water or make it a feature.

[nightjar]

Except that, on a new build, it was an extra 2.5 metres deep, mass concrete instead of a concrete strip foundation, which required a concrete pumping machine to deliver it from the mixer lorries on the road, instead of a small mixer onsite, and £20k.

Colin Bignell

[The Natural Philosopher]

I had to go down 2.m meters in one place,but that was ash, not willow..

The concrte pumping machines aren't taht expensive. Not thousands certainly.

[nightjar]

Either you were lucky, or are on different soil. The discovery of a willow in next door's garden meant that my foundations changed from 0.5m to 3m deep, which, apparently called for a specialist contractor.

That was simply one of the things about the project that stuck in my mind. I didn't bother to ask for a detailed breakdown of individual costs, as I wasn't going ahead at that much extra over the original estimate.

Colin Bignell

[The Natural Philosopher]

Actually, that was PROBABLY bollocks. We had this a while ago, and very few trees go much below 1.5m deep if that, and the majority are only

0.5m deep.

IO have seen extesnive damage from subsidence with a localised willow and shallow (about 02m) strip foundations, but that is all.

Probably you, like me, were on clay soil, where locaklised drying of the roots - or worse, cut roots resulting in long term re-hydration of the soil and heave - meant the stability near the surface would extend a fair way below.

Nevertheless I don't think any more than 2.5m is EVER called for, and that is achievable with a medium digger.

Deeper than that piles are probably a better and more economic bet anyway.