The backyard is all clay soil and doesn’t drain well. With all the rain we’ve had this winter, we’ve had standing water in a lot of the back for over two months. A crew came in on Thursday, March 4th and started work on the project, first being to dig a trench along the rockery perimeter. They put a French drain in that, that will meet up with the French drain pipe at the front fence and connects with the city main. We also had them remove a large area of the back yard down about 14 inches of the thick, blue clay. They replaced that with river rock, then about two-three inches of better-draining topsoil, and then they spread mulch with grass seed. All done by Monday the 8th.
(They removed all that soil by hand: four guys digging it out with shovels and carting it in wheelbarrows around to their truck in the driveway… crazy.)
Standing water since December 
drain under front yard, connects to the city main 
new French drain along rockery 
area filled in with rocks, then loam 
and finally mulch and seed
10K1 