Thought I would update you all. Earlier this year I managed to rotavate in a lot of grit sand, then top with good quality topsoil and then turf it. It's rooted really well to the soil and looks great. Also no more boggy lawn! the sand seems to be doing the trick by allowing the water to soak down into the ground better. Thanks for all your help and suggestions!
Well done @dan.townend , it's great to read a success story and all your efforts are paying off. Not only have you got the satisfaction of knowing that you laid this grass, you will have years of enjoyment from your garden. You have done a brilliant job in your garden and the grass looks amazing.
We have a huge 30m+ garden (ex council house when land was dead cheap) and the clay soil is terrible, also loads of bricks and rubble buried in it. To be honest I found it's best just to accept it and avoid the garden at all costs for 6 months of the year. It looks awful in winter and loads of standing water after heavy rain, but it normally sorts itself out.
Militant aerating and removing all the moss didn't have any effect whatsoever, and anything else would be too labour intensive and way too expensive.
Strangely enough it often needs watering in summer!
We have a huge 30m+ garden (ex council house when land was dead cheap) and the clay soil is terrible, also loads of bricks and rubble buried in it. To be honest I found it's best just to accept it and avoid the garden at all costs for 6 months of the year. It looks awful in winter and loads of standing water after heavy rain, but it normally sorts itself out.
Militant aerating and removing all the moss didn't have any effect whatsoever, and anything else would be too labour intensive and way too expensive.
Strangely enough it often needs watering in summer!
Make peace with it!
Why? I want my garden to look nice, not like a swamp like it did. It was a couple of days of work but as long as you have a rotavator it's not that hard to improve the soil drainage by adding some grit sand and better soil. It also wasn't very expensive to do, you can buy bulk sand and soil pretty cheap, hire a wheelbarrow and rotavator and for not too much. Then you can use grass seed instead of turf if you want to make it even cheaper.
Mad penguin ...lovely garden. Dan have you tried just forking it over. Someone may have said builders are notorious for leaving debris in the soil which could be impending drainage. Mine used to get water logged but I put in a larger broader and dug in lots of compost from a commercial waste composter. Great now.
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Militant aerating and removing all the moss didn't have any effect whatsoever, and anything else would be too labour intensive and way too expensive.
Strangely enough it often needs watering in summer!
Make peace with it!