any tips on drainage?

I know we've had a particularly wet few weeks but parts of my lawn/garden are suffering with poor drainage. The old house owners have confirmed that its been a bit of an issue for them over the years too. The soil is clay like so I'm guessing that this won't be helping and also the neighbours garden on one side is a little higher than ours, so maybe this is adding to the problem?

Do any of you have any tips/ideas on how I could improve drainage without breaking the bank?

 

Suggest having a look at this site first:

http://www.pavingexpert.com/drain16.htm

and then coming back with your plan for folk here to make suggestions, or any questions you may have.

 

And if you need to dig a drainage ditch then do it between yourself and the neighbour, not at the bottom of your garden. You want to stop their water from entering your garden.

 

Thank you all for your feedback. Well, I started digging out at the wettest points and ended up stumbling across an old (blocked) clay pipe land drain that was leaking out into the ground.

I dug a 10 metre length of it out (upto my boundary) and replaced it with a perforated pipe which then fed into a french drain which I also discovered!

I ended up digging out and area about 3m x 3m to a depth of about 2ft which I have now filled with 4 tonne of 20mm clean limestone. My plan now is to top soil and re-turf, hopefully this will work (fingers crossed) as the digging and filling has all but killed me

 

Well Done You

I Pray This Works Then Well Worth the Effort