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Looking for something to do in the garden this month? Take a wander over to your pond and have a look to see if it needs a bit of tidy. There is usually a lot of debris that can be removed, falling leaves need fishing out and you may want to cut back some dead growth of the plants.
There may still be the odd dragon or damsel active and some frogs may have already returned to the pond for winter but otherwise it can be pretty quiet at this time of year, hence why it is such a good time to do any maintenance.
When the frosts come it's best to leave the pond alone, the only thing you really need to do over winter is occasionally allow the pond to breath during extended freezing conditions. Usually its a good idea to float a ball in the pond now before we get the frosts, then you can just take the ball out to leave a little breathing hole to allow gas exchange.
Anyone seeing much action around the pond at the moment? Of course if you don't have a pond, now is a good time to get digging!
Warden Intern at Otmoor.
Wow,
How did you make the waterfall?
Unknown said:I was thinking of adding a splash of colour to the bog garden this weekend. What plants are good at this time of year?
Hi Jack, it's a difficult time to get plants that add colour in the form of flowers to the bog garden, plants like purple loosestrife might flower long into the late summer autumn months but much of the foliage is dying back now. You could add some Michaelmas daisies to the surrounding beds in the future as they will add some colour to the area into autumn and attract in any late flying insects. If I can think of any other autumn flowering pond/bog plants i'll come back and add them!
Morning Jack, sry, hadn't seen your reply until this morning; the pond/waterfall was from Tatton Park RHS show in 2011 when we were offered this feature a super-discount price ! so the guys reconstructed it all in our back garden. The work that went into it was unbelievable and took 4 months (well 3 full months, the other month was Christmas/holiday break) ; the waterfall was built by first constructing a horseshoe type breeze-block wall with a deep trough on 1st two layers (again in breeze-block as a support) and a huge run off area, the fall and edge of pond was eventually covered in sandstone rocks (each cemented in), it was like a work of art watching the chap chipping away at each rock so it fitted perfectly. I will try find photos of the construction process as they've accidentally been deleted of the hard-drive :( hope I find them !
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Regards, Hazel
Hi Jack, If you happen to see this reply, I have now put all the photos up of the pond construction we had done so it will answer some of your questions regarding how the waterfall was built ........CLICK HERE to go to the link