I have a clay soil back garden with the majority of it being lawn. Drainage has always been a problem for me and my neighbours. I have 3 dogs so muddy paws is a big problem with the amount of rain we’ve had recently and most winters. I‘ve some quite a bit of work already to try and fix it. I started off with a couple of french drains going to the lowest point where I fitted a sump pump. This had a big impact straight away, I no longer get a pool of water on one bit of the grass. But that is very localised, I haven’t fitted meters and meters of drain under it (yet). I know this year I’ve spent a lot of time in the back garden because we couldn’t do much else so the ground would be white compacted. Therefore I got a hollowtine aerator and ran that over the whole thing, followed by filling the holes with sharp sand to stop them re-filling in. Again, big help, the grass doesn’t turn to mud with a bit of drizzle anymore.
I’m now out of ideas, and I know on Sunday it’s going to be hours of heavy rain, which is probably going to turn it into a mud bath for days. I had thought of putting some plastic dust sheets down over the worst bits to keep the rain off and direct it to the sump pump. Kind of like they do when it rains during cricket matches. But I don’t know if this will do anything?
Has anyone got any other ideas? My wife is pressing for artificial grass but I prefer the real thing and it’s a lot of work that I really don’t want to do to change it over.