Plants for moist soils

You don't have to give up on areas of moist, boggy soil, Instead, consider some of the lovely plants that are well adapted to live in these sites

- Anne Swithinbank.

FOLLOWING a cold, wet winter, spring is a good time to focus on troublesome areas of the garden. Many plots have dank wet spots where water tends to sit, brooks overflow, springs discharge or there is a naturally high water table.

Steps can be taken to improve drainage, especially where conditions are stagnant, but the easiest solution is often to find plants happy to thrive in these lower-lying areas. Moisture lovers require damp soil but need good drainage for long-term survival and mounding their beds is often a good solution. While most of the roots inhabit the upper layers, deeper ones can reach down to access water during dry spells.

Attractive moisture-loving plants

True bog and marginal plants, such as the royal fern (Osmunda regalis) and cultivars of Iris laevigata can flourish where water levels fluctuate between standing water and moist soil. Yet even these can come unstuck where soils that are saturated from autumn to spring are apt to dry out in summer.

As there is a wide range of attractive moisture-loving plants, a low-lying area is best viewed as an opportunity rather than a disaster. It's a chance to widen the range of plants you grow without having to create a bog garden by burying a pond liner and filling it with soil.

In large damp sites, well-chosen trees will help dry and aerate the soil ready for colonisation by other plants. In what we call 'the wilderness' at the bottom of our garden, hornbeams, alders, a weeping willow and the narrowly upright form of deciduous swamp cypress Taxodium distichum var. imbricarium 'Nutans' thrive in permanently wet clay.

Trial and error