Plans for a new Garden Project for 2014 to follow if of interest - A Running Thread...

Hello All,

I hope that  you all had a good Christmas and New Year? I'm back to work tomorrow following two weeks off so a bit depressed tonight!

Whilst we have been having this terrible weather I simply haven't been unable to get out in the garden as it is completely water logged! This has however given me the opportunity to think about what I need to add to the garden in 2014 for my beloved wildlife.

Following a lot of head scratching (partly due to Nits that my daughter brought home from infant school YUKK!) I decided that although we have several small bodies of water and water features and of course the (fish only) large Koi pond, I need to include a larger body of water dedicated to wildlife and native planting.

Having just viewed Hazy's impressive pond build I'm not sure how interesting mine will be as it will be on a small budget and completed by me on my Todd with dodgy hips and back!! LOL

Any way my decision to dig up the family lawn was met with a resounding "NO!" from Mrs H so I had to think of another plan to include a bigger pond without losing anything else from the garden. This actually proved quite difficult as the garden is now well developed and planted but fit this in I must!!

So donning wellies and with Choco at my side we squelched out to see how we could fit this impossible plan into my already crowded garden. After much deliberation and more head scratching (damn Nit shampoo doesn't work good job I haven't got much hair!!!)  it was decided that I would have to lose about half of my wildflower area! Now this isn't an ideal solution but I've estimated that I can regain the same area if not more by planting wild flower strips in other parts of the garden (Don't tell Mrs H!!)

To try and explain the complete and utter jumble that is in now spinning around inside my head here's a few pictures and sketches of what I'm planning and what I hope will give you a better idea of what I'm trying to achieve!....

1. So firstly this picture shows you where in the garden the pond will be. As you look at it the right hand side of the wild flower area will be similar to the size and shape of the proposed pond. This is however a very old picture and the dry gravel river bed extends right across the garden now. The wild flower area oh the left will remain but here it is only partly de-turfed and is a little bigger now. (This area is in the bottom third of the whole plot)

2. Now you can see where it sits within the garden this picture gives a little better representation of the shape and size of the pond (right) and remaining wild flower area (left)

3. So what does the inside of my head look like?

Well I tend to get an idea and be able to see how it will look almost straight away, I then play around with it in my mind until it looks about right before going outside, getting stuck in and just letting it evolve! However for this purpose I have attempted to draw what is inside my head and what I envisage this to look like!

 It's not very often that I put my thoughts down on paper so please do forgive my terrible drawing and obviously it's not all to scale but a fairly accurate representation of the idea I think....

(click on picture to enlarge)

I hope that this scribbled plan makes sense? Basically you can see the edition of the new pond is quite substantial but I feel fits quite nicely into this area with the wild flowers and then the wildlife area behind. You can see that the loss of wild flower planting is made up by further planting of wild flowers around the swing, the fronts and one side of the raised veg beds, along the raised bank in the wildlife area and the addition of more flowers along the bank of the dry gravel river bed. The two areas alongside the pond and next to the seating pod will be planted with extra tall pollinating perennials such as Purple Loosestrife and other native perennials that are good pollinating plants. The secret seating pod will actually be cut off from the rest of the garden and will become only accessible by a small bridge adding to it's secrecy and  privacy.

One of the biggest problems with siting the pond here will be getting it to sit naturally into the rest of the garden. A big problem with this spot is that the lowest point of the garden is actually the dry gravel river bed feature and would normally be where the water sits in a natural landscape. This ditch is in fact an old drainage ditch (Known locally as a gripe) When this land was a field the water would naturally sit in the gripes so that the cattle could stand on higher and drier land! This ditch still floods if we get a lot of rain and there is a drainage pipe buried underneath meaning that I can't excavate it or include it in the pond!

To overcome this problem and to make sure that there is a logical relationship between the pond and the ditch I have decided to build an old stone 'damning' wall complete with old rusty iron sluice gate! This will give a natural partnership between the two features and a logical explanation to the pond being on slightly higher ground.

So again attempting to demonstrate what is in my head here's another scribble of what this feature should look like.....

As you can see the wall will be given an 'old' look with planting pockets built in for some native plants that you may find in old stone walls. This will be a feature not a working damn or sluice ( I ain't that good!! LOL) but I'm hoping that it will look OK once overgrown and weathered in.

Again to give you a visual representation of my plans, I hope that this feature will in time look how the 'old stone bridge' feature that I built at the other end of the dry gravel river bed a couple of years ago looks now (over grown and natural)...

Well that's my plans for 2014 and what is currently floating around in my mess of a head! I have posted this up as it will be a long process for me due to my current disabilities and I think quite a challenge. I'm hoping that by having it here it will give me the motivation to get it done and I do hope a few of you will find this an interesting project to follow as it evolves?

It will take quite some time to do and in the first instance a while before the garden is in a dry enough condition for me to start! I will try and post up what I'm doing even if just trying to 'blag' materials (remember I have very little budget for this!!!) to try and keep the interest going.

Let me know if you have any thoughts or ideas that might help me or enhance this project or just anything that I may have missed?...

Best

Higgy