Boggy garden problem

[daveaspy]

Our house is on a hill so the gardens of adjacent houses step down and there is a wall between:

Wall

• daveaspy
• 3 Feb 2013
• 1

The previous owners of my house used to have a driveway right to the end of the garden and the fences you can see used to be in line with the gate you can see on the right hand side. The decided the shorten the drive (which was too long!) and extend the garden, moving the fences back to the wall (they were fastened to the wall but came off with high winds last week)

Now I think they just dumped a bit of soil and turf on top of the driveway, there only seems to be a few inches before I hit solid ground in that area and this gets very wet and boggy. I suspect there are drainage hole on that big wall which contributes to the waterlogging. This is the boggy corner (although the waterlogging does go all the way along the wall):

Boggy strip

• daveaspy
• 3 Feb 2013
• 1

and the driveway (cannot see in this pic but there are drainage channels from the wall across the driveway to the gutter)

Driveway

• daveaspy
• 3 Feb 2013
• 1

So, how can I solve this problem? I guess one option is to remove all the turf over the old driveway and make sure all hard material is removed (the driveway is tarmac). I was thinking about putting a raised bed in that area, a couple of foot high, would that help at all or would it still need the driveway ripping up underneath it?

 

[willbailey]

What about about throwing in the corners some plants a gunnera they are wet loving plants or you could just hire a large drill and stick a load of holes to help drainage https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=g...EFKy20QW__IDgBg&ved=0CDkQsAQ&biw=1262&bih=644

 

[daveaspy]

Thanks for the suggestions Will.

I had a poke around today and there doesnt seem to be tarmac underneath. There are a few inches of soil on top of a sandy layer then very heavy clay with some stones and a brick in there too. The soil I dug up in the corner was very smelly, is this just stagnant water?

 

[willbailey]

gunnera manicata thrive in bog you can even plant them in ponds or drainage channel just bought 10 meters to go round my conservatory you could tap into a drain pipe and into the surface water pipe .