My Wet Patch

[d000hg]

Sorry for all the details, I'm trying to paint a picture here. Let me know if a sketch would help!! Skip the details and read the actual issue at the bottom!

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We have a very sheltered south-facing sun-trap of a tiny garden, about 5m x 5m. It's bounded by the foundations of our house on one side, a road at the bottom, and a retaining wall on a 3rd side as our terraced next-door neighbour's house is nearly a whole storey lower.

In the corner bounded by the retaining wall and the road, which is at the south-west corner, is a brick wall about 5 feet high. This means that corner gets the least sun, as noon sun is blocked by the brick wall and afternoon sun by the fence which is on top of the retaining wall. Only in the early morning does it get sun.

So our garden is basically a square surrounded by brick and concrete and hard-packed road base. On top of this, our soil is only about 6-12" deep below which is a very dense layer of hard-packed rubble... what they use as a preparation when building a new estate, I forget the proper name.
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The problem is the south-west corner, which gets little sun, suffers badly from dampness as well as shade. Which means the lawn grows fine for the summer and then has a helluva time fighting moss. It retains water so even some days after rain, it feels squishy. The rest of the garden drains better, I assume because that corner is bounded by barriers on both sides it can't drain anywhere.

I don't want to dig up my whole garden so what CAN I do? I already tried pronging it with a fork but it doesn't seem to do much. I assume the hard layer under the soil stops water getting out.
I was reading about soakaways, would a small one - considering the lawn is only 4x4m - work here?
Is there anything you can build/buy which will actually suck the water out of the ground though? I was thinking something you hammer in, and through capillary action or evaporation it allows the soil to dry. Does such a think exist?

[Nicos]

well- the best thing to suck water out of the ground is a tree!
You would probably need to contain the roots though so as not to damage the walls etc.
Not sure how you could do that though...you'd need to research into root containment.

How about digging up that corner and making a small raised section...lined with gravel to assist the drainage and plant on top in tubs- say azaleas or fruit/veg trained upwards?

Or- what about a bog feature garden with a small water feature???? ...thinking upon the lines of if you can't beat it, go with it!!

[d000hg]

I do have a couple of currant bushes and a small tree (for now) in the corner, though lack of sun means they might struggle too although so far so good. Since the containing wall is something like 12 feet tall and is indirectly supporting the road from falling into their garden, I think it's quite substantial!

If it were a bigger garden I'd say just turn the corner into something else, but we barely have enough space for the lawn as it is. And a perfectly neat rectangle suits my desire for order! Paradoxically, the wet patch is where the grass grows fastest in the summer - 2-3x as fast as the rest - but it never gets very thick.

[Nicos]

One thing you need to be aware of is that is you start altering the drainage, the water will certainly go somewhere else- maybe to a part of the garden you would prefer to use on a regular basis!...or worse still, encourage more water to drain to that area!

[skeggijon]

How about a water feature?

[mothhawk]

Learn to love moss. It's soft and springy, needs little cutting as it doesn't grow tall, and if in a damp area, stays green all year. You can fill it with snowdrops, bluebells, and anemone blanda for the springtime.
Moss lawn works for shade | Hoosier Gardener

[Bigmallly]

As it it's in a corner, could it be lending itself to become a rockery?

[d000hg]

As it it's in a corner, could it be lending itself to become a rockery?

If I didn't already have plants there, and had the space, and hadn't already put the time in this year re-doing the lawn to be beautiful and neat and square

So my "can you suck water out of the soil" idea doesn't seem to exist, which is a shame.

I'm surprised there's nothing out there you can just hammer into the ground and it acts as a more permanent aeration solution. A soakaway seems the best option but a lot of hard work!

[Bigmallly]

It has been known to hammer a long bar into the ground in several places to assist drainage.

[Nicos]

How about a live willow structure which would suck up some water and be pretty at the same time??

[Nicos]

My thoughts are that you may already have a pile of rubble down there if you are so close to the road???

[d000hg]

It has been known to hammer a long bar into the ground in several places to assist drainage.

Can you go into a bit more detail?

My thoughts are that you may already have a pile of rubble down there if you are so close to the road???

I think our entire estate has a foundation of this hard-packed rubble stuff, I can't remember the proper name. It sets into almost like a soft sandstone and while you can dig into it, it's very hard work. This is only about 9" down and is very solid so I think it acts to stop water, rather than as a soak. My thought was to break through this in one small area and dig quite deep, then fill with larger rubble and gravel which would be much more porous. And that hopefully, this would be deep enough to get through to whatever is underneath the stuff the builders laid, so water can seep through.

If the retaining wall to next door had air bricks it would probably be a non-issue but as it is, their wall acts as a dam I think!

[veggiechicken]

It has been known to hammer a long bar into the ground in several places to assist drainage.

Can you go into a bit more detail?

Even completely non-technical me, understood what BM meant

[d000hg]

How does hammering a steel rod into the ground help... I'd have thought it would need to be porous? That's why I asked. Does he mean like a regular steel piling you'd use for foundations or something else?

[veggiechicken]

Same principle as using your garden fork - but bigger and deeper holes - just to open the soil up a bit.