How to improve drainage in the garden

This blog post covers a variety of ways to improve drainage in the garden, including:

• Improving lawn drainage
• Land drains
• How to install a land drain
• French drains
• Go artificial
• Prick, slit or spike the lawn
• Improving flower bed drainage

During the summer months (and sometimes all year round too), many of us want our gardens in tip-top condition, ready for an influx of compliments during family barbecues or drinks with friends. Unfortunately, not all gardens are blessed with the best drainage, and with our UK weather being so unpredictable, garden gatherings are perfectly acceptable to happen all throughout the year.

If your garden suffers with drainage issues (perhaps an area of the lawn becomes water-logged very quickly), then we’re here to help with some solutions around how you can improve the drainage in your garden, keeping it looking fresh all year round. 

Improving lawn drainage

The good news is there are a couple of different ways that you can improve lawn drainage in your garden, and below we’ve provided some information on what these look like and how to install garden drainage. 

Land drains

If your lawn suffers from drainage issues quite a bit, maybe during the winter you’re staring at a big puddle for most of the season, land drains are an impactful way of dealing with the problem, and effectively draining a garden. Land drains essentially sit underneath the lawn in shallow trenches that you can dig yourself, pointing towards a soakaway system. When the water soaks through the lawn, it hits the perforated land drain, and these then direct the water away from the affected area. They can also be useful tools for keeping other areas of the garden well-watered as you can direct the drains where you need to or alternatively send them to a soakaway system to deal with the surplus water.

How to install a lawn drain

Installing this type of garden drainage is relatively straightforward. If you decide to direct the water to a soakaway system, you’ll need to build one of these first. This will need to be positioned in an area of good drainage, at least 5m from a habitable building and at least 1m x 1m square x 1m deep below the bottom of the incoming pipe. This will help your soakaway system be the most effective for successfully draining a garden.

When you start digging the trenches for the land drains, be sure to save any good soil or lawn so you can re-lay it back over the top. You might also want to get some scaffolding planks to run over the grass to keep things tidier as you run around the garden with a wheelbarrow. We recommend laying the land drains in a sort of herringbone pattern, and ensuring the affected areas are no further than 2m from a pipe. The pipes will need to join to a central pipe which will then carry the water to the soakaway. 

Once you’ve dug your trenches, you’ll need to line them with weed fabric, lay the pipes, surround the pipes with small stones to hold in place and then fold the additional weed fabric over the top of the pipe. Replace the topsoil (we recommend at least 150mm) and any lawn you’ve kept aside. 

French drains

Another option for lawn drainage is building a French drain. It gives the excess surface water somewhere to go, so can be a useful solution for improving drainage in the garden. To build a French drain, dig a small trench where you want the water to drain (ideally at the lowest point of the affected area), making sure it’s dug to a gradient. Fill it with graded aggregate, starting with larger pieces of rubble at the bottom and finishing with a finer shingle on the top. Again, you’ll want the excess water to drain to a soakaway system as previously mentioned. 

Go artificial

Although generally speaking artificial grass isn’t always the most environmentally friendly option (you can buy eco-friendly versions), it can be a good solution for water-logged lawns. They’re surprisingly good at soaking up rainfall, but you’ll also want to make sure a permeable sub-base is added underneath for good measure. 

Prick, slit or spike the lawn

This is one of the easiest remedies when it comes to draining a garden. If there’s just a little excess water sitting on the lawn, pricking your lawn is an easy way to improve drainage in your garden. Make a number of 2-3cm holes and then fill them with sand or similar absorbent material and your lawn will have a chance to drain more effectively. The deeper you can make these holes the better. 

Improving flower bed drainage

We know that not all garden drainage problems are linked to the lawn, so we’ve also put our gardening heads on to provide a couple of ideas on how you can improve drainage in the garden when it’s linked to your flower beds:

• Grow more plants: they’re great at soaking up excess water, but if you’re planning on planting some new additions in water-logged areas, make sure they’re the right kind of plants and are up for the challenge. 

• Use bark chippings: not only can they help with weeds and also look quite nice, but they’re also great for soaking up a little excess surface water. 

• Raise your flower beds: this can be a good plant-saving idea if they’re struggling with all the excess water. By building raised beds you can improve drainage in the garden using good quality soil and more of it, so there’s more soil to soak up the water.

When it comes to garden drainage, here at Drainfast we can provide materials to help you build drainage systems that work for you. We stock a variety of land drainage products, surface water drainage materials and soakaway crates so you can keep your garden looking beautiful all year round.