Dealing with clay soils

One problem we had previously was that during heavy rain, as the rain couldn't absorb into the clay soil, it would run onto the patio creating a muddy mess and staining the slabs. We therefore decided to add a gravel border which would collect this run off and although wouldn't drain very well, would hopefully be enough to mitgate the muddy run-off.

We used a aluminium edge you can see here which simply spikes into the ground. Getting it straight was very difficult as we would keep hitting stones that had to be removed.

The finished work, including laying some top soil on the grass to slope the garden towards the metal edging.

In the next post I will update how the installation has fared over two years and what could have been done differently in relation to working in very dense clay soils.