Lawn drainage - Keeping your garden lawn in good health

Boggy garden lawns are probably much more common in the UK than dried out and sun damaged lawns. However finding a supplier of a sprinkler system to keep your garden watered in the summer is far easier than advice on drainage.

We have a few pointers here for those gardeners that are looking to solve the problem of a water- logged garden lawn.

Essentially in draining your lawn you are looking to remove as much surface water as possible. It could be that the soil type in your area makes this process difficult naturally. An under lawn drainage system will help matters.

1 Identify where the water is coming from and going to within your garden. The water will most easily be drained off to the lowest point in your garden, or at least lower ground than the boggy area.

2 Plan the layout of the pipe network. Consider the most direct routes to save expense, consider the angle of fall required for the water to run effectively (1 in 175 - 225 should be fine), and consider the area you are going to have to dig up to install. Going under a garden patio will make for heavy work.

3 Having planned the route of your garden drainage system, you can start digging trenches. You can purchase a spade especially for this. The pipe work should sit neatly below the turf level without leaving a ridge running across the lawn.

4 Having completed the trench, give it a layer of gravel on to which you should lay a perforated drainage pipe. This will run down to the soak away area.

5 Back fill with gravel and then cover over with the topsoil and lawn turf you originally removed.

6 You then need to dig cross trenches at right angles to the main drainage pipe. These cross trenches should be filled with sand and connect with the gravel of the main trench.

As a final measure you can try to gradually build some sand into the soil to make the lawn drain more easily. Sprinkle sand over the area over a period of months/years and let the sand level increase. It will also form a layer at the top, again helping the drainage of your garden lawn.

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