A place to learn, share and inspire others to create a haven for you and for wildlife.
Sign In or Register to join the conversation
Hi folks. My newest project is building a Wildlife Pond in the garden so I thought it might be fun to document the progress as I go about this. I realise that this should maybe have been started a bit earlier in the year but better late than never I suppose. We’ve been thinking about a pond for a while now but the only place we can really put it is quite close to some trees down the left hand side of our garden. I think this may raise some concerns with the root system puncturing the pond liner but I’m thinking if I can line the pond with maybe a thick piece of old carpet, sand and pond liner insulation, thing should be fine. The trees that are close to where the pond is going are conifer types so aren’t actually too deep rooted. I’m also considering building a small Hibernacula next to the pond in the hope that this may encourage Frogs and Toads to take up residence here. The pond itself is not going to have any pumps or filter systems, I’ll be relying on the correct plants and creepy-crawlies to carry out the task of keeping the water clean and oxygenated. I’ve been looking at a lot of other threads on here in regards to other peoples Wildlife Ponds so I’m hoping that I may get some good advice along the way, this is all new to me so any and all suggestions and help would be very much appreciated. There are another few issues in regards to the slope of the garden but I’ll get to these as we go along. The first step was to decide on the size and shape of the pond which wasn’t as easy as it may sound. I didn’t want a rectangular pond nor did I fancy a teardrop shaped pond. After about an hour or so of messing around with a hosepipe on the ground, we decided on the shape that you can see in this first photo.
Once this had been decided upon, the first cut went in...
And the job of removing the turf began...
I've been doing most of the work in the evening after I come home from work and I managed to capture this sunset at the end of the first night.
This next photo shows the area where the pond is going to be, taken from the upstairs window in the house.
The roots from the trees are actually quite small and shallow so hopefully things should be fine in regards to this. I suspect that the further down I dig, the less roots I'll come across.
Anyone who's taken turfs off a lawn will know that it's actually quite hard work, they're much heavier than they look to be.!!
I'll maybe add some photos of the birds that visit the garden as well, like this male Blackbird. I've been spoiling him a bit by feeding him pastry and now when I go out into the garden he almost always appears and follows me around until I've given him his pastry fix. On the upside, he comes really close to me at times, within a foot or so although I always throw the pastry balls into the middle of the lawn in case any of my cats are lurking around. I saw him feeding a youngster the other week but I haven't seen the youngster since. He always takes the first load of pastry away, then returns and eats the second lot himself.!!
At last, the turfs are all removed.
The pond doesn't actually look as if it'll be too large and I know that it'll 'come in' a bit once it's planted up, but when you look at the area that the removed turfs cover, I think the entire surface area is in the region of sixty square feet. I've laid the turfs aside for now as I'm still not sure if I maybe need some of them during the build.
I do actually have the basic outlines of a plan for all of this. I've made this up on the PC as I didn't really want to show off too much with my excepionally neat handwriting....!! Like all plans though, it may change as time goes on.!!
As you can see from the plan, the shape of the pond on the left hand side is also to accomodate the Hibrenacula, plus I need access down that side for trimming the trees now and again. You'll have noticed that I intend to put a wall at the bottom end of the pond although this is only going to be a few inches high. I still have lots of stones left from my recent wall building project as you can see from this next photo. I have plans to use a lot of the stones in the pond but more about that later.
I thought ity would maybe be fun to have a wander round the garden at times so I'll start off with a wee look at what's going on in the Greenhouse at the mpment. Mrs A has been gathering bedding plants as you can see from the next few photos.
A few more...
She's also got four hanging baskets planted up although they've still to be hardened off before being put uot at the start of June maybe.
The first two...
And another two....
The only thing that I have in the Greenhouse at the moment are these Carrots. (Ignore the scruffy handwriting, a deranged five year old child must have snuck in, erased my perfect handwriting and replaced it with his own).!!
Whilst we're on the subject of vegetables, I've got a few things going on in containers and bags. From left to right at the back we have five bags of Potatoes, Mint, Rosemary, and a stone container with Herbs in it. I know there's Chives, Parsley, Thyme,Fennel and a few other things that escape me at the moment. In the containers at the front from left to right we have Peas, Spring Onions (which I've only put into half of the container, the other half I'll sow in maybe a month's time), Onions and Cabbages. I'll maybe keep you posted on the progress of these as the Pond build goes on.
Speaking of the Pond, I've begun the process of digging it out.
I'm starting off by going down to around one foot in depth althought this won't apply to all the way round as I intend to have a few gradual slopes going into the water. I'll dig a one foot deep shelf all around the back of the pond (the edge furthest away from the path). The soil was actually quite dry so the digging hasn't been too difficult (so far).!!
And a bit more progress...
A few more birds have been in the garden as all this is going on, like this handsome Jackdaw....
And one of the first young Starlings to appear although their numbers are starting to take off now.!!
A quick dash out to the front of the house now to show you this Lilac tree/bush in the front garden.
And what may be my first ever sighting of an Orange Tip Butterfy? Mrs A spotted it.!!
Since I'm still on the subject of plants, here are one or two others which are starting to come out at the moment. This Aquilegia has started to show (I think that this may be one that I grew from seed last year but I'm not 100% sure of this).
I've no idea what this is.!! It's really pretty though.
Getting back to the pond again, one issue that I have is that the garden slopes away the further down you go. This next diagram shows the difference from one end of the pond to the other.
This leaves me with what I think may be two possibilities. I could build up the surronding area of the pond to have the wall at the far end raised about eight inches as is shown in the next diagram.
The problem I have with this idea is that the new wall that I built recently would be hidden from view along the front of the flower bed when viewed from up the garden. The front of the new wall is only around four inches high. I think I may have decided to raise the wall at the end of the pond to around two inches and then when digging back to the other end I'll actually sink the pond's maximum level around six inches into the ground, if you follow my meaning. The next diagram may help explain this a bit better.
You can see in the diagram where the Hibernacula is possibly going to fit into all of this but more about that another time I think. I've got a few summer/autumn flowering Heathers to plant on the Hibernacula as you can see from this next photo.
As you can see from this next photo, the weather got quite wet for a few days.
This led me to erect a small Gazebo above the pond area, after all, I'm not quite ready to have it filled with water yet.!!
The final photo of this particular post shows the progress made to date. I'm not hopefull that too much will be achieved in the next week as I've come down with a stinker of a cold and I'm also on holiday for a week and had two or three days out planned. (The stones in the hole are just in case a Hedgehog manages to fall in, allowing it to get back out more easily).!!
Thank you if you've read all of this and I'll update it once more progress has been made. I do know that I still have drainage/overflow issues to look at but I have a basic plan for that as well. Until the next time, I hope you've enjoyed.
Paul
My bird photos HERE
Hello Paul, hello all!
This update is, of course, splendid as ever. I love that the starlings and sparrows have already discovered your pond for their bath. How good that you now have a sparrow-bush of your own.
For now I've a few questions. Paul, you also want to build a hibernaculum. To me this sounds as if this could be a place for insects to spend the winter. Is this true?
What did Wendy mean with "Thank you for keeping stum"? Did she mean that we kept silent about FdL? "stum" reminds me of the German word "stumm", which means that a person doesn't say anything.
In the above post Catlady writes "Until then TTFN". What does TTFN mean?
The pond is so much work, and now here I am with my questions.
And now I have to say good bye myself, because I have to get ready for my nex nightshift.
Yours, Bente
Hi Bente
Keeping stumm does indeed mean keeping quiet about something - it is sort of a slang word obviously stolen from your german language. I am going to PM you because I used to study german quite some years ago in my youth and it's about time I chatted with you a little more!
TTFN is short for Ta Ta For Now (Ta Ta meaning 'good bye') so really just saying Auf wiedersehen!)
Hope the night shift goes well.
See my Flickr photos here
https://www.flickr.com/photos/115745582@N04/
Hello Christine,
thank you for the explanation. Regarding "stum" I nearly thought as much, but when there suddenly appears a German word in the middle of an English text, it sometimes takes me by surprise. Please feel free to PM me, I'll be glad to chat with you. Thank you as well for the good wishes for my nightshift. I'll shut down the computer now, and take a little nap before I have to get ready for leave.
Until then!
Bente
This is such an amazing thread, so interesting & informative. I need to bookmark it for my next pond. I'm hoping for a big improuvement on the last one!! Your narrative & photos are brilliant Paul, are you going to hang a flag from the chimney to celebrate the finishing of the pond??
I didn't know who FdL was either, all I could think of was IKB!
Best wishes
Hazel in Southwest France
Hi folks, and once again I say thanks for all of your lovely and entertaining comments.
Christine: Don’t worry about missing out on the sport of taunting me, I suspect this may stem back through time to some sort of ‘tribal instinct’, and if you were here at the time you may not have been able to stop yourself from joining in with all of the other troublemakers.!! As it is, your name has remained in a stable position on my list and is not up for review at this time.!! Ceilidh doesn’t get out too often and even when she does, she quite often goes back inside after a time. She does try to hunt the birds but with them being used to Harry and Tee Tee in the garden, they’re always one step ahead of her. Tee Tee is a great mouser, but she always (that I’m aware of) takes them back into the front porch of the house where her wee bed is, seemingly unharmed. I’ve lost count of the number of mice I’ve rescued from here over the last few years. She did have a Dunnock in there a few weeks ago but once again it appeared unharmed and flew away as soon as I opened my hands after rescuing it. Harry did catch and kill a Sparrow around five weeks ago though; I saw him rushing into the greenhouse where the Sparrow must have got itself trapped. In Harry’s defence, he was a semi-wild cat for a long time so I think this would make him more inclined to kill a bird for survival reasons, a trait that probably still hasn’t left him even though he is well fed now on a daily basis. I ran down but I was just too late to save it. It is sad, but the cats are only acting through instinct and I’m quite sure that they don’t actually catch as many birds as some folks maybe think that they do. Thanks for the ID on the butterfly, it’s always good to have to start a new folder in my collection of photos.
Catlady: I had looked up a few ‘FdL’ things as well and there do seem to be a lot of companies out there using these initials, and although I never came across your one, I can understand why it would make you pause to think about It.!! As for photos of me in the water, the night that I extended the beach into the deeper water I was absolutely eaten alive by midges, which in my case cause me to come out in huge red lumps for around an hour before the bites settle down a bit. I looked like someone with some sort of awful disease which would definitely not have made for the best of photos.!!
Bente: You’re correct in thinking that a Hibernaculum is a place for things to hide away in. I thought that if I got any Amphibians in the pond it may be a good idea to have somewhere close by where they may choose to hibernate through the winter months. I’m quite sure that there will be plenty of creepy crawlies that’ll go inside it as well but this may possibly be an extra incentive for any Amphibians to use the space as well. I’ll try to explain a bit more about it when it comes up in another update.
Hazel: I’m not sure about a flag from the chimney but there’ll certainly be a glass or two of wine involved once this is all done. When you put the initials IKB at the end there I thought..”Noooo”, but then it came to me, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, even I’ve heard of this chap.
Once again many thanks for everyone’s lovely comments and input, as is the usual, it is very much appreciated.
Update...nooo that was an episode Paul, my hubby wondered if I had left the vicinity I was so quiet!!
Looking at your first photo on this page and the last one shows the difference you have made to your pond, and how lovely it looks too. I bet Mrs P is really happy and will be dangling her toes in the water before long. Isn't it great to see the birds bathing in the water, you have their approval and that's what matters, but what a good idea to have a triangle just for them.
It's amazing how many different creatures will be attracted to the water as you will know, so looking forward to many more "updates" from you soon.
Lot to learn
Hi Gaynor, and thank you so much for your very kind comments. It is fantastic to see the birds using the pond so soon and with such enthusiasm, the bird bath area was always in the plans and I also have another area for them at the bottom corner which they seem to like and use regularly. There have been lots of ‘wee beasties’ starting to move in as well, so I’ll have to see if I can get some photos of them to add to future updates. I spent around an hour yesterday, crouched down on the flagstones, just staring into the water. If the neighbours see me at this they’ll likely think that I’ve finally lost the plot.!!
Hi folks, I’ll bet you’d all forgotten about this thread, it’s been mid July since I last updated anything here. I thought you might like to know how the pond build went along, so here we are again. We’ve got a fair bit to get through, so depending on how the photo loading goes, we'll see how we go with it. This update won’t actually bring the thread to a conclusion, you’re not going to get off that easily, not yet anyway.!! We’ll start off where the last update ended, the pond plants had been ordered, and they arrived in this large box.
They were actually very well packed and arrived in excellent condition. I used a company called Waterside Nursery who were very helpful, and they are to be highly recommended in my opinion. A nice lady had answered the telephone and when I told her about the new pond (size, depth, location etc) she went through the basics that I needed to get the pond up and running. Even though she had some of the plants that I had on my list, she almost refused to sell them to me on the basis that they wouldn’t be suitable for my particular needs. This quite impressed me as a lot of companies out there would have sold me anything and everything just to make a sale. Once again, if you’re looking for aquatic plants, you could do far worse than using Waterside Nurseries. I had actually contacted another company before this, four unanswered telephone calls and an email which was never replied to, made me decide to try elsewhere. Anyway, for the ‘planties’ among you, the list of plants that arrived were as follows
6 x Hornwort
6 x Spiked Milfoil
1 x Water lily (James Brydon)
1 x Water lily (Madame Wilfron Gonnere)
1 x Loosestrife
2 x Frogbit
2 x Water Soldier
There are two or three other plants in the pond as well, I had gotten them from a local garden centre, but their names elude me at the moment. This next photo shows the new plants lined along the edge of the pond before opening them up in readiness for them taking the plunge.
A closer photo of the 'James Brydon'...
And not forgetting the 'Madame Wilfron Gonnere'.
The plants had been sent overnight and were packed in damp newspaper with wee tags attached to each plant explaining how to put them in the pond. (The wee green knife is mine, you have to buy one yourself, it doesn't come with the plants).!! The plant in the pot is some type of Loosestrife, apparently it's supposed to be good for Damselflies and the like.
The Hornwort, Spiked Milfoil and Frogbit are unwrapped and good to go. I can't remember if it's the Hornwort or the Spiked Milfoil that has lead substitute weights attached, to take it to the bottom. Whichever one it was, the other one is just spread around in the pond and will find it's own depth, be it on the bottom, or floating near the surface. The Frogbit floats at the surface.
The plants are scattered around in the pond. The Lilies and Loosestrife are placed on the shelf at the middle left at the rear. When you introduce Water Lilies to a pond, they can't just be plonked in the deep water straight away, they have to be lowered towards the bottom gradually; more about that another time though. The water is still cloudy from the build, but it will clear...after it turns green first.!!
The next photo shows a newspaper 'The Hinckley Times', which was all crumpled up and used as additional packing in the big box of plants. More like ‘The Wrinkley Times’ actually. I sorted the pages into the correct order and laid the newspaper under a rug in the house to flatten it out again, although when Mrs A noticed the lump in her rug, I had to remove the newspaper to a safer place. I was left with no other option other than to Iron It.!! I’ve not read it yet but it’s in the wee cabinet next to my bed, waiting for a winter’s night to be read on.!!
I told you that I had a plan for the gaps between the flagstones, this is it. Nothing spectacular or fancy, just a case of cutting some spare bits of turf to the rough shape of the gaps, and stuffing them in there.
And so on up the rest of the side.
A sprinkling of compost was brushed into all the gaps and over the top.
And then a good old 'going over' with the watering can. Remember, this was back at the start of July when we were having a great spell of weather.!!
Another view from the side.
Ok, now we come to something else completely. You'll remember my wee cat ,Ceilidh? It is with great sadness that I tell you that we lost her last month. She took ill at the start of September, a liver problem, and after two weeks of ups and downs, we had to make the heartbreaking decision to put her to sleep. She was only nine years old and we miss her terribly, she was such a character. This is one of the last photo's I took of her, back in early July when I was building the pond. My wee pal Ceilidh.
Moving on, there were still a few birds going about, like this gorgeous female House Sparrow.
The Coo's were enjoying the lovely summer weather...
And we had some beautiful sunsets in the evenings, like this one.
And a few Gulls heading off to roost, against a lovely colourful sky.
The Corvid's were also still here in some numbers.
I was going to keep going with this update, but it's taken almost an hour and a half to load the photos so I think I'll leave the next part for a later date. The next part deals with the building of a Hibernaculum, so until then, I hope you've enjoyed.
Superb update. What a shame about the puss. Lovely photo. This pond lark is making me think I should have one. Both yourself and Nissanman have made the cogs start to turn!
Unicum arbustum haud alit duos erithacos
(One bush does not shelter two Robins)
Zenodotus (3rd Century B.C.)
Thanks MC, it was a lot of work, but well worth it. As you'll see in later updates, the pond has settled in nicely, we've had diving beetles, wee corixa type things, lots of different insects, and a large Frog was spotted one day, although it had disappeared by the time the camera was found.!! We also had the first Grey Wagtail that I've ever seen in the garden, once again, no photos though. The Starlings and Sparrows love to bathe and drink in the pond as well.