Boggy garden....help?!

[KwazyKupcakes]

Hello chaps

I wonder if you green fingered ladies might be able to help....

DH and I moved to a new house recently, with a garden (a first! Hurray!). However, the grass is really quite boggy as its on an old flood plain... We have sanded the lawn but the worst part is that the previous owners dug a vegetable patch at one side which they lined with flagstones at the sides and bottom (?!?!) and this has now basically turned into a six foot water and mud filled trench...

And ideas how to make the place less boggy, beyond sanding? There's not much planted, bar two dead tree stumps - would planting a tree help de bog?

And any ideas, most significantly, on getting rid of the trench? It is profoundly depressing to look at :(

Grateful for any help!

Not sure about draining but if it's going to be really hard to get rid of could you turn the mud trench into a bog garden?! Stick some gunnera in it perhaps, iris, King cups, candelabra primulas etc? There are some really lovely boggy things out there. Otherwise I suppose you would have to dig it all out and redo it with gravel etc? Difficult to imagine what it looks like so these might be ridiculous ideas.

Thanks catpot - shall Google bog gardens...

Here it is...

Do you think they put those stones in to prevent something from spreading? Is there anything aggressive on the other side of the fence?

Silver birch like boggy land if you are thinking about trees.

Agree with zebra those stones could be there to stop something spreading, maybe from next door. Maybe leave it a few weeks to see if anything comes up. Best to know what you are dealing with before spending ££ on new plants.

Bog garden sounds fab though, I'm considering one in my garden too. Does anyone have one? What plants look good? Some big plants like the gunnera and ligularia (sp?) are too big, I was thinking about hostas but have a major slug and snail problem in my garden so they probably would be munched

Fairly sure there's nothing malicious coming from next door - they are very keen gardeners and I'd be surprised if they hadn't been quite conscientious. Plus there's just a small flower bed directly beside the fence (although trees further away). That said, good tip to wait and see what might come up - so far, just weeds and some Swiss chard, oddly...

V taken with the idea of bog garden though - I second MewlingQuim's questions :)

With silver birch - they are beautiful but a bit massive?!

There's not a bamboo on the other side of the fence is there? that could explain slabs set like that.

I think a big question here is: what is the soil like next door, where the neighbours are keen gardeners - and what are they growing on the other side of that fence? It's possible to have really waterlogged soil in the winter, that then dries out in summer. If this is the case, you need to do work in one of two ways: either dig it out, put in a ripped pond liner and turn it into a proper bog garden, or dig it out and add loads and loads of horticultural grit so that it drains more freely.

When you say you're on an old flood plain - how long ago did it last flood? Do you need to build some flood resilience into your new garden?

When you say 'sanding' - it needs to be horticultural sand, or fine grit, NOT builders sand.

You could always replace boggy bed with raised beds ?

If you have a fairly new house with a soakaway it will make the garden very boggy