fixing a waterlogged lawn

3 years ago

Has anyone successfully improved or fixed a waterlogged lawn?

Just moved to new house and devastated to discover half the lawn is waterlogged. We knew from survey that bottom E d of garden is probe to flooding with heavy rain (indeed it was torrential the day we moved in so we have already witnessed the standing water puddles at the bottom). We will formulate some plans for a raised seating area and raised base for shed etc to work around this problem.

But the main lawn is also awful, currently heavily overgrown with moss so walking on it is impossible, you just sink down into a squelchy wet sponge. Obviously getting rid of the moss and aerating the soil with holes will be our first port of call but I fear it will need a bigger more expensive solution to get it to be a nice lawn for the kids to play on.

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Ruth House
Original Author

3 years ago

Thanks for the advice. It's a 60s house but we believe the water table is high or soil heavy clay as the run of gardens on our portion of land all suffer. We have to solve it, we have kids who love the garden and gardening is my husband's only hobby! We were devestated to discover it was in such a bad state, you just don't notice these things when viewing houses.

I'm starting to think French drains will be needed, can you please explain what you mean by a 'soakaway'? Is that like a larger extention to the French drain system deeper underground? Is is it connected to an existing drain? We are surrounded by other gardens on all sides so can't see an option for diverting water without flooding someone else's garden, but deep underground should be OK shouldn't it?

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Comments (6)

Rowland
3 years ago
hi Ruth,

it is possible to get a borehole put into the garden and use it to reduce the high water level. this is dependant on geo technical conditions in the area. if you get a local company to advise I'm sure they can get you a solution. it may be a cheaper and more permanent solution to removing soil or adding layers of sand and aggregate to provide a more free draining sub soil.

the borehole may have to be 50m plus in order to achieve the solution.

best of luck.

Rowland
PRO
AGI Landscapes
3 years ago
Get a percolation test done. If the house is relatively new it may be down to soil compaction from builders, they never rectify the surrounding ground after the properties are built, they get the cheapest quote for turfing and no prep is done.

It may just require the ground being rectified and uncompacted, if not you may need some field drains and a soakaway.
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PRO
AGI Landscapes
3 years ago
You will definitely need to do a percolation test first which is easy, you could do this yourself.

A soak away at the lowest part of the garden is the best location to put the field drains into.https://www.gclproducts.co.uk/p/civils-and-drainage/soakaway-crates/recocrate/these are the sort of products that are best, don't fill a hole with rubble for a soakaway as there is little space for the water to occupy and these soon fill up with soil etc and become useless.

Wrap the crates with plantex so no soil washes in and make sure that they are deep enough so you have a good layer of top soil above for planting or re-seeding.

https://www.drainagesuperstore.co.uk/product/peforated-land-drain-coil-pipe-60mm-x-50m.html

This is the pipe to use, surround it with a 10mm pea gravel.

Hope this makes sense and helps.
eilidhmca
3 years ago
We moved into a house last October where the lawn was completely water logged and sodden, to the point that we would sink or skate on the lawn it was so soggy. We have clay soil and a high water table (our basement floods). The previous owner had not maintained the lawn properly for circa 10 years, ie not picking up lawn cuttings or leaves in the winter which I don’t think helped.

This spring we hired scarifier and a rotavator and planted new lawn seed specifically for clay soil. My husband is now picking up the leaves regularly and so far it seems to be doing well. I think it’ll need aerating every year to keep it from clogging. One thing we were recommended to do, but didn’t because we couldn’t be bothered was to infill the aerated holes with sand.

I don’t think we’ll really know if all this has helped until further into winter but it’s totally different from this time last year when we moved in.
Ruth House
Original Author
3 years ago
Thank you so much for sharing your experience, it's reassuring to hear you have seen a difference after your hard work. And some good tips. Thanks again. Hope your first year in your house has gone well.

fixing a waterlogged lawn

Ruth House
Original Author

Comments (6)

Rowland

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fixing a waterlogged lawn

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Rowland

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eilidhmca

Ruth HouseOriginal Author

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Ruth House
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