My garden's drainage is very poor and most things that's planted either dies or has poor results. Does anyone know what sort of plants thrive in these conditions?
There are many plants that like a clay soil and a trip to the library will find them for you, as for `normal` plants I have had the same problem in my garden with clay soil.
What I did was to dig out a hole much larger (approx 2-3 ft round) hole and fill with nice topsoil, compost and fertilizer to create a sort of micro-climate for the plant and it worked great, by the time they get big enough for there roots to be encroching in to the clay they are well established and don`t seem to mind.
have you thought about putting in land drainage?i had the same problem as you,infact it was a concrete yard before i started,i dug down about 2 foot dug out a few trenches and laid 80mm perforated polypipe,connected these to a exiting gully drain,burried pipes with gravel,and filled it up with 20 tonne of topsiol.i have now got a lawn and flower borders (only garden in street ) well worth the effort
Have the same problem as you where I live (15m south of B'ham). that bad in fact that when I dug a pond, after one spades depth of crap soil I hit solid (patchy) clay, realised I probably didn't need the liner I had brought. What I do now is for every three spadefuls of soil add a scoop (two hands full) of sharp sand or "garden" grit + a shovel full of recycled compost from local authority (they used to be called councils, what happened while I was away? I wouldn't give them authority !!) and another "handfull" of pea grit if available and give a good mix/chop up. Breaks it up nicely and we have palms, agave, bananas etc. etc. doing quite well.
Another alternative is a load of horse muck in autumn, had this at my last house and the next years lawn was the greenest I had ever seen (we had toooo much and what do you with a pile of sh*te ?).
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