OUR GARDENS
Garden writer and author Louise Curley shares how she turned a badly-drained claypit into a flower-filled haven
AS A FREELANCE garden writer, I spend a lot of time gazing out of the window, so the view has got to be good! When my husband Ian and I moved here just over two years ago, our excitement soon turned to frustration as we saw how torrential rain left pools of standing water, and dry weather caused huge cracks in the soil. Digging test pits (and breaking a spade in the process) confirmed our suspicions – we had a deep layer of thick yellow clay, the sort of stuff you’d turn into pots, underneath a thin layer of topsoil.
After months of head-scratching we replaced our slippery decking with a patio and traded the mossy lawn for large raised beds filled with new topsoil.