clay soil

[anniebear]

what am I meant to add to it

I think I read grit? Is that just the normal ornamental grit or is there a special type?

It is horrible soil and most of it is in the shade, not really sure what to grow in there, I like lots of colour and moe cottagey than formal planting

roses love clay.

organic matter will help, and maybe some grit or sand - the aim is to open the structure up a bit to let the air and water move about more easily - so you don't want big stones.

Clays are usually fertile, but slow to warm up and heavy to work when wet. Most things will grow ok - unless they need free draining soils.

would they need sun though?

Part of it is in the sun so I will plant a rose there, thanks, just not sure what to put in the shaded part

thanks

Hostas love clay too - they like sun, roses will flower in the shade.

also clay compacts easily when wet - try and keep off it when it is wet - so maybe build in some stepping stones or paths you can work from.

If it is compacted it is fairly hard to get it back into good condition.

try a few packets of seed for colour for this year to give you time to work out what will go there long term.

I'm off this afternoon to buy some spent mushroom compost. You're supposed to dig a load of it into the topsoil (ask at garden centres where to get it) and poke your fork right down and wiggle it around to open up the soil, then put some fertiliser like fish, blood and bonemeal (from garden centres) on it

that's my weekend planned anyway!!

we added mushroom compost to our soil once - and got huge crops of mushrooms for about 18 months afterwards

aww - I never got mushrooms!! I used loads of it in my old garden.

shame

so maybe ours was fresher then (got from a mushroom farm) and had not been left to rot for a while.

We were completely inundated with them - took carrier bagfuls to work every few days

I've recently added grit to my clay soil. It was it a low patch of the garden that gets waterlogged in winter. It was dificult to find B&Q and Homebase only had gravel so went to local nursery in the end and got 2 x 25kg bags for £3.99 each. Hopefully in will help next winter + dug in compost.
Plants for clay include:- lady's mantle, hosta, kniphofia(red hot poker), peony, bergenia, pulmonaria(lungwort) and shrubs:- Aucuba, berberis, chaenomeles, cornus, philadelphus, kerria japonica, ribes, spirea, syringa(lilac) and weigela.