Back garden swamp

colette harrington asked 13 years ago

My back garden is just so wet, i cannot now walk on it at all, as my feet are sinking down into the mud/swamp and its only September. We have 3 children and we cant let them out to play as its just too swampy-would we better to just pave it all, or is there something we could do – I do know once when we had good weather, that when it did dry out, we had cracks in teh ground big enough to put your hands into – We did put extra topsoil etc on it, but doesnt seem to have made any difference

1 Answers

Gerry Daly Staff answered 6 years ago
This is a severe drainage problem. Probably it is caused by a compacted layer or by water flowing from higher ground. You can dig some holes about 25cm square to find the compacted layer and try and break through and fill with gravel to take water down. If this works, dig holes in every couple of square metres, filling back to almost the suface, about 10cm of soil.

If this does not work, the only way to reduce wetness is to drain water off, but to do that there must be an outfall … a ditch or drain to take away the water from your drainage pipes. If there is no outfall, it may be possible to dig out a soakaway pit to drain the water into and then for it to dissipate slowly.

A soak pit is about 90cm square and 90cm deep, filled with large stones and topped with grass and you dig drains with plastic land drains with gravel on top to take the water into the soak pit. 

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