Garden desperation!

Hi everyone,

Firstly, thanks for letting me in! I found you via google in a desperate attempt to get advice with our back garden!

We have lived here four years, it’s a dreaded new build with a clay heavy back garden. It’s the end house of four which are slightly raised from us meaning we get all the run off when it rains. Next to us is the concrete compound so nowhere for the water to go.

Long story short, several attempts to rectify the flooding were made. Eventually we had a soak away fitted around 7 feet deep. It eased the problem but never fully solved it over winter. The grass grew back last summer but was plagued by leather jackets. I can’t put anything in the ground as it doesn’t last and the air in the general area always feels damp.

The garden is now moss, weeds and leather jackets and it’s getting me down! Over summer, without rain, it’s rock solid. I e gone out there today to today up and have noticed the lawn has sunk in places and become uneven.

I’m at breaking point with it all, it getting me down! I’m not green fingered but would love to at least try. Anything I do plant has to be in pots and planters and I’m not keen on that look..

Any advice would be very very welcome, we have no real budget to speak of at the moment.

The garden is north facing, slightly NE. The left side gets no sun for about 2ft in, the right side floods but gets sun. The bottom end is dry but full of moss.

 

Hi,

Seems you have had a lot done, but little improvement, though your limited photos do beg a few more questions

Does the back of your garden back onto another garden , again higher ?

When you had the soak away fitted , though 7ft deep how wide and long was the trench and when they dug down was it clay all the way ?

 

Thanks for your reply, the back leads to an alley way from the house to the right, it’s just grass, behind that is another garden at the same level as us. The houses to the right only incline by a few feet.

The soak away was placed about a foot from where the slabs end and was about 3/4ft square. It was solid all the way down I believe, they broke a digger trying to get through it. There are pipes diagonally laid across the garden leading to it. You can actually see where one sits to the right, it’s turned the grass a different colour.

We did point out at the time that there is nowhere for the water to go but we’re told by Bovis that we should monitor it, to be honest, we had been in over two years before the soak away was put in. The garden had been dug up many times and we had truly had enough. The kids had nothing to play on and we couldn’t let the dog out as it was mud then fresh turf and then mud again (repeat cycle)

I can provide more images if needed.

 

Hi,

That sounds a bad problem and would think with all that deep digging they have done you will get a fair bit of settlement under the grass.

The essence of a soak away is that it can do just that, collect the sudden excessive water in the sump and it slowly soaks away into the ground, but if the ground is so hard /clay its not going to escape quick enough, if at all.

My garden is on a slope and have seen the bottom end, away from the house thankfully, flood to about 6" deep in winter or even a really wet summer, so I made a small sump and put a small pump in there so when it flooded I could turn it on and it pumps into the drain ( though perhaps not that legal !)

Think something along those lines might be a way for you, though being electric and drains you do need qualified advice from someone on site.

 

It sounds to me as if the whole garden has compacted clay soil, if that's the case then I can't see the soak away working. I think the only way to solve it is to dig the whole lot up down to at least 2ft and mix the soil with sand, gravel and compost. Often with new builds the garden is full of buried builders rubble, if that's so then it won't help the situation. I say dig, but it's unlikely a spade would do the job, at best you would probably get away with a mattock or pickaxe, but a mechanical digger would be better.

 

First thing a Contractor does on site is to strip the topsoil. They will normally retain what's required for garden, planting and grassed areas (normally different depths) and remove the surplus.

What can then happen on sites with heavy clay soils, and according to whether the finished ground levels are lower than the original ground levels, is some further excavation of subsoil, down to solid heavy clay.

Then the Contractor runs heavy tracked plant over that heavy clay, compacting it, and in the absence of any requirement to break it up, simply spreads topsoil over hard, baked, compacted clay.

When it then rains, rainwater will struggle to penetrate beneath the topsoil into the compacted clay, and instead will pond, flow laterally, or both. If the housebuilders have scimped on topsoil depth, it will make it worse.

If that is the cause of your problem, rainwater from adjoining gardens with higher finished levels will flow into your garden, adding to rainfall in your garden that wont drain away Paved areas in adjoining without surface water drainage will exarcebate matters.

Many years ago, I was involved as a consultant surveyor in a dispute where a social housing provider's contractors were provided with part of a partially rendundant allotment site on the basis that they refurbished the plots to be retained, complete with paths, sheds, Clubhouse/toilets, parking areas, etc., etc.

But it all went horribly wrong, when the previous and new tenants took possession of their wonderful new plots, and a substantial proportian of them were 'boggy' and useless for growing anything in.

And that was the point when I got involved, as the only employee of the multi-disiplinary practice I worked for that actually had an allotment.

Saving this now as getting rather long and dont want to lose it

 

OK, so what happened was the Contractor had to re-strip the topsoil, then break up the underlying 'pan' in the underlying clay to a sufficient depth to enable free drainage. Then re-import the topsoil.

I was not party to the final agreement on apportionment of costs, but it would not have been cheap

 

So if the above scenario is the cause of your problems, in my opininion it goes beyond a gardening problem and becomes a Legal/Housebuilder dispute, that will have neighbour implications.

If your neighbours's rainfall is draining into your garden and causing problems, they are liable, and possibly the housebuilders if they were responsible for it. Should the remedy be digging up their gardens (which aren't ponding), they may not be happy about it.

If it comes down to it, you could always construct a low brick wall (AKA dam) just within the boundary line of your neighbour up the slope, and only have to sort out the drainage of rainfall within your own garden.