Waterlogged garden - Need advice please

[LJD]

Hi there. What a brilliant site, it's great to read through and see the help you've given over the years!

I moved into a house a couple of months ago which is only just 4yrs old. I noticed that the garden was retaining water and a section had ice over it in the bad winter but just assumed the winter was extreme and it would clear up but it's not.

The garden is basically a fairly narrow but longer rectangle behind our sunroom (which was built a year ago) and nothing much has been done to it other than a row of conifer trees in a border at the back with bark chips along. As it is south facing I cut them down as I didn't want the light blocked or any potential root damage to foundations. The garden slopes away from the house and sunroom and has a depression in the middle of it that causes pooling at times but feels a little boggy even on dry days (although there's not too many of those in Scotland!!).

Having spoken to my neighbour, he advises me that a few neighbours have water problems and they have contaced the house builder who has run checks and told him they have no issue with cracked drains etc. He then advised me that it was the house builder who put in the trees and bark in my garden for the previous owner to reduce the then water problem.

My neighbour also tells me he has dug a trench round his house to 6ft which he installed new drainage and 1 or 2 sumps to the rainwater outlet but that he still has grass that is wet. Another neighbour built a new deck 4wks ago and said that when digging the foundations, water was filling the holes.

I want to have the garden nice with a new patio, beds with shrubbery and a small section of turf, so that it is pretty and low maintenance.

I was panicking until I read thousands of posts on drainage, french drains etc but wondered if you could advise me on the best course of action from here.

Would a landscaper look at the drainage as part of the overall project or should I have a drainage contractor look at our site before I even consider doing any design? We don't have a large budget.

I appreciate any advice or recommendations.

Linda

[lutonlagerlout]

its very common now houses being built on wet grounds
it sounds like the water table is very high in your area linda

a picture would be handy ,but your biggest problem is that the water you dont want, has to go somewhere?

land drains work but they can dessicate the ground

maybe you should base your planting around water loving plants
cheers LLL

[Stuarty]

Sounds like Dunfermline, new houses, heavy soils and poor drainage, god knows how many drainage jobs i've done there :laugh:

Some landscapers will take on drainage works, some wont, what part of the country are you in?

[LJD]

its very common now houses being built on wet grounds
it sounds like the water table is very high in your area linda

a picture would be handy ,but your biggest problem is that the water you dont want, has to go somewhere?

land drains work but they can dessicate the ground

maybe you should base your planting around water loving plants
cheers LLL

Hi there. Thanks for the reply. I do intend to use some planting to assist with the water issuebut dont want the water to ruin my new patio. Linda

[LJD]

Sounds like Dunfermline, new houses, heavy soils and poor drainage, god knows how many drainage jobs i've done there :laugh:

Some landscapers will take on drainage works, some wont, what part of the country are you in?

Ha ha, I bet you have!! I'm in Hamiton.

I want a new patio laid and just want to be sure the water doesn't make it sink in a couple of years! Linda

[seanandruby]

hi linda. make sure you dig off any saturated ground. place some terran membrane liner then build up your layers compacting as you go. Do this 200/300 wider than your intended patio area. I think you have a heavy clay soil and maybe you could varify water table and if possible sink a bore hole through the clay and drain into that.

[mitzimad]

we had similar problems with my partners place and we dug a sump and pumped it dry what realy annoyed my partner was it also drained the neighbours garden and they hated each other