Urrgh...water logged clay beds - what do I do with all the plants I've just bought?

[Iamtheoneinten]

I'm a complete novice gardener. But I've got a huge garden and so I try my best, I'm sort of the slash and burn type and I also make a lot of mistakes, that can usually (but not always) be corrected by moving a plant somewhere else etc. So I don't feel I usually do badly. I might have made an expensive error now though.....

I'm in the, very much not, sunny South East that has had almost constant rain for what feels like forever. Clay soil as is the norm here. Our, south facing, back garden is - I thought - very soggy. I didn't realise quite how bad it was until today when I've gone out to plant. It's utterly water logged! Even a smallish, shallowish, hole is filling with water as soon as it's dug. I should have checked it before buying, but I didn't.
And now I have a lot, and I mean a lot, of plants I have just bought and I'm not sure what to do for the best.

I have a lot of Dahlia bulbs that I won't attempt to plant out, I'm assuming the best thing is to plant in to pots for now and move on later when the rain has dissipated a little (and frosts aren't likely). Or should I keep them, unplanted, in the shed for a while, and plant straight out when the conditions improve? How long can I leave them, if so?

But what about all of the plants in pots? Huge selection, including Brunnera, Clematis, Kniphofia, Geums, Lupins, early Lavender, Alliums, Delphiniums, Silene, Foxgloves, Pulmonaria...and others. I do have an enormous compost heap ready for use, that was liberated from a huge unmanageable pile that must have been cooking for at least ten years - nice and crumbly. So should I dig holes and fill with the crumbly compost and plant now. Or should I leave them in the pots and keep watering them and hope the rain and water logging subsides within the next week or so?

Hoping someone with more knowledge can help me out with some advice before I waste all the money I've spent on the plants making an error.

I had one horrible large bed of compacted heavy clay , so wet it smelt. Tried all sorts but what really helped was putting in shrubs, particularly ,Cornus, roses, magnolia and pyracantha. Everything else drowned. Just wait a month to plant and it will be workable, then when the shrub framework is established, other plants can go in the gaps. I wouldn’t put dahlias into heavy clay however. If you investigate, other parts may be more loam like. If not, put them in pots. Other plants that love clay, hellebore , geraniums, potatoes. I know someone who planted their entire garden with potatoes the first year, heavily mulched with compost, and had friable loam thereafter.

The garden might not be ok in a months time. It depends if it's stays waterlogged. Mine slopes down to the bottom,where it levels out and we have raised veg plots. With heavy daily rain, the fruit trees and lawn are under about 4 inches of water, which will then drain away quickly.

We're bogged down living on a slope with houses below us and houses below them. This extraordinary 18 months of record rain has hit us all. Everyone is floating

I just plant stuff in my garden that likes the clay and the wet. The iris do well, some plants like wallflowers, tobacco plants, hellebores, ferns, roses, hydrangas dont seem to care. Philadelphus thriving too.

i have a river that runs all around the garden, so high water table, a soak away which is a trench dug to guide excess water back into the river, if i didn’t have that then the garden turns into a lake.

foxgloves, brunnera and plumeria put up with most conditions, but i have a lot of plants doing well. too many to mention. i did have dahlias which were fine, probably planted them in May, what killed them was when i stored the tubers in a shed and the freezing temps last winter killed them. i have to think twice when ever i buy a plant, so i go for wet loving plants and shrubs. Hydrangeas, viburnum opulus, to mention just 2 of my favourites.

If you have a large garden I would just spread organic matter on top of the beds as a mulch. There's no need to dig it in; it will act like a sponge and the water will move up into it. The worms will mix it eventually and you can use your effort elsewhere. It might help soil structure not to dig it very much as well.

I improved my clay soil a lot by adding perlite (lighter than grit so easier to handle). I'm not going to lie it did look horrific for a few months before it got worked in. Vermiculite might have looked less nasty but I think it's not as effective at aeration.

I re-read the thread and couldn’t find recommendations for feeding, though that probably just means I missed it.

we have far more trouble in this country through over feeding than under feeding - look at the state of our rivers and that the wild plants that are increasing their abundance are things like nettles which thrive on rich soil. So I don’t feed the garden, just concentrate on replacing what I lose, through home composting.

it may be I’d get even better results if I did fertilise, but in the greater view of things, recreational gardening is not that important.

@MereDintofPandiculation do you feed roses? I gave mine a handful of rose food the other day but thought I should probably have gone and dug into the pile of horse manure at the allotment instead and bought some home.

Or do they not need anything much?

I don't feed mine. What I have is 8 ramblers which are large enough and old enough to have their roots going deep down, a couple of 40 year old floribundas who are flowering perfectly well, a couple of Queen Elisabeth which I'd be happy to see the back of, and another half dozen old roses/species roses. All of these growing in mixed beds. If I had a fancy rose garden, I might get better results with fertiliser? I don't know. I'm perfectly happy with the level of flowering and general vigour.

They will benefit from the occasional mulch of home-made compost that I give to all the beds when I have the urge and when there's actually some bare soil to be seen.

I've never fed the plants in my ornamental gardens (feed my house plants and potted plants though), including when I gardened on poor soil on chalk (mostly in raised beds).

I just incorporated manure and organic matter wherever I could, and let them get on with it. They all did fine, even the roses. Maybe they would have flowered more if I had fed, or maybe they would have just grown too fast and fallen over, like they tend to do on my the richer clay I have now.

Probably biased as it's what I'm used to, but I found the more compact tighter growth of plants in my old garden nicer - things didn't get leggy or straggly anything like as fast.

I don't feed the plants in my borders at all either as my garden is heavy clay soil which is rich in nutrients. All I do is use an organic mulch (normally bark) that I top up once a year.

I do feed my houseplants and plants in pots outside.

We put seaweed on the beds. New plants get a mixture of compost, blood fish and bone and some hen poop. It's just a boost to get them going.

Hi op I have heavy clay soil, the roses seem to love it. From the plants on your list, I grow delphiniums and lupins easily, allium have also done ok. I'm sorry but I don't know how the others would do. I think the advice is "right plant, right place" so don't despair but research before you buy. As far as dahlias are concerned I've always grown these in pots.