Good plant/tree for absorbing moisture from water logged garden.

[annie0000]

Hi,

My back garden is completely flat, lawned and unuseable for a good part of the year because it is constantly waterlogged. We have 2 young boys who end up playing football in the street because from October until high summer the garden is a quagmire. We dont want anything fancy, just some grass for the kids to run about on, but we dont want to spend a fortune on drainage. The whole estate in flat anyway, so I dont know how we could drain it anyway.

Are there any plants or trees that are particularly thirsty that we could use that would help dry up the soil?

[nonomaybe]

First have a look by digging down in several spots over the worst affected area to see if there is any other reason than the usual compaction problems. If you don't find concrete pads, air shelters, runways or the like you may be able to improve your drainage with the application of copious amounts of sharp sand. Do any of your neighbours suffer from the same problem?

[annie0000]

Hi nonno - I think it is a common problem across the estate - it is completely flat and it is is new build estate 5 years old - We are not originally from there. The locals in the old part of the area across the road tell us that as far as they were concerned it used to be a swamp! As aI said we are not gid on gardening - the people over the back from us are and have a lot of plants, decks and paths, so theirs seems to be okay, but we want to leave the garden fairly open for the kids to play in. We may as you say have to resort to lifting the lawn and doing some serious work on it or just wait until the kids are older and plant it a bit more.

[nonomaybe]

By digging down you may find that you have a pan fairly near the surface.If you have and you break through it this will start to improve your drainage.So you can repeat this throughout the garden.If this isn't the problem you can improve your drainage as suggested in my previous posting .You don't have to lift the grass to do this.Let the grass grow a little long so that when you loot in the sand (rub it in) the grass will show,breathe and grow.There are trees that are thirsty but they could easily take over all but the largest gardens.you could make this improving an annual task and sharp sand gets relatively cheap by the lorry load, assuming you have easy access!!

[annie0000]

Hi nono - access is no problem - grass area in the garden is about 40 foot by 30 foot - the rest is decked - i take it I am looking at a big lorry load and a lot of shifting then! Sounds like the least painful option though, thanks for your help.

[neo101]

a weeping willow tree is a thirsty tree !