Help with my miserable lawn

[walkingtheplank]

We've had some work done in our garden e.g. fencing, potting shed built, paving etc. This has rendered the lawn an even greater quagmire than usual. We have a very clay soil and there appears to be a small dip in the middle collecting water. When we walk on it (obviously avoiding this at the moment) it is totally squelchy. The builders have walked on it though and it's just a brown claggy mess with no grass.

We can't afford to turf so need some quick and easy tips. DH says he's going to aerate the lawn and chuck some seed down. I feel that it needs levelling and some assistance with the soil consistency. The lawn is pretty unusable for a large chunk fo the year due to the clay consistency which is a shame as DCs would like to be out there playing.

Can anyone point us in the the right direction. We haven't got much money to spend on it and time is limited too.

I have a similar issue. After speaking to lawn specialists it seems there isn't much I can do unless I dig it all out by a couple of feet and start again with better soil. He did say to me that we have had a lot of bad weather and it will look much better come spring. We had the same problem with a big muddy mess by our shed where people were doing work. We have stopped walking on it for a couple of months and the grass is already growing back in that area so you may not need to throw down seed at all. Grass is pretty hardy stuff so I would watch and wait. We are going to put in a path to the shed and maybe get rid of the grass around the kids swings etc so they can be used in winter.

Yes, we were advised to dig out and replace the soil which was a lot of money.

Do you need a lawn there?

The lateral thinking solution to this is to turn the existing lawn that you can't really use into a flower bed for damp-loving plants (if it's really soggy, a bog garden). It can even be a positive, helping you to think about landscaping to avoid the 'washing machine' garden (beds around the edge, lawn in the middle).

It's not a big garden and a strange shape so yes, I would like a lawn there for aesthetics and for the children.

If it's always terrible, then I'd consider digging out some drainage so you have a usable lawn for the future. If it's just really bad this year because of the rain and the work, then you might well be able to get away with aerating and reseeding. You can do quite a bit of minor relevelling by adding grass seed mixed with compost and topsoil.