Freestanding Pond

Im not so sure about free standing but you can build one above ground level maybe with sleepers and the line it. :P

Here's my suggestion for a small but cheap & easy pond. Worked for me in clay soil & surprisingly popular with birds for drinking & bathing & even the odd dragon fly.

1) Go to somewhere outdoor/horsey where they sell horse feed trugs like this: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Large-Feed-Skip-Big-Enough-Shire-Horses-/200543974443?pt=UK_Horse_Wear_Equipment&hash=item2eb15a342b (mine was not this one it is shallower I think & it only cost £19.99). Buy the widest one you can find. Don't go for too bright a colour though.

2) When you get it in the garden you have 2 choices, easy or not so easy:

Easy: Place trug on flat flowerbed & bank up earth around sides

Not so easy: Dig hole in flowerbed same diameter & depth of trug. Then place trug into it hole. 

3) acquire some pebbles & gravel from somewhere & cvover base of trug.

4) Put in one or 2 larger stones which will break surface of water for birds to perch on. Also get some suitably shaped sticks to poke in ground surrounding trug that will hang out over trug & provide more perches.

5) Get yourself off to local gearden centre & buy some nice new plant to put all around your trug. Come home & plant them.

6) Fill trug with rainwater (or wait for it to rain a lot !). Ask a pond owning friend to donate a bucket of their pondwater - you need this for the micro-organisms in it. They may also give you a few small pond plants. 

7) Sit back & watch birdies enjoy your mini-pond.

You're not exactly going to get ducks, kingfishers or a vast variety of waders but every little helps ! Sadly I left my version at a previous residence but it worked a treat in a small garden. Even got frogs ! Less than an hours work to create it & if you hunt around less than £50 spent.

You can even go for the trug pond deluxe version where you buy 2 trugs, one larger & deeper than the other. You sink the larger one into the flower bed, line it with soil, put the smaller one in it, pack soil in between the 2 trugs & water until saturated, then proceed as above but instead of normal plants you can put some native bog/marsh plants, which will attract some different types of bugs to your garden.

Anyway good luck with your pond building effort.

clare b said:

Here's my suggestion for a small but cheap & easy pond. Worked for me in clay soil & surprisingly popular with birds for drinking & bathing & even the odd dragon fly.

1) Go to somewhere outdoor/horsey where they sell horse feed trugs like this: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Large-Feed-Skip-Big-Enough-Shire-Horses-/200543974443?pt=UK_Horse_Wear_Equipment&hash=item2eb15a342b (mine was not this one it is shallower I think & it only cost £19.99). Buy the widest one you can find. Don't go for too bright a colour though.

2) When you get it in the garden you have 2 choices, easy or not so easy:

Easy: Place trug on flat flowerbed & bank up earth around sides

Not so easy: Dig hole in flowerbed same diameter & depth of trug. Then place trug into it hole. 

3) acquire some pebbles & gravel from somewhere & cvover base of trug.

4) Put in one or 2 larger stones which will break surface of water for birds to perch on. Also get some suitably shaped sticks to poke in ground surrounding trug that will hang out over trug & provide more perches.

5) Get yourself off to local gearden centre & buy some nice new plant to put all around your trug. Come home & plant them.

6) Fill trug with rainwater (or wait for it to rain a lot !). Ask a pond owning friend to donate a bucket of their pondwater - you need this for the micro-organisms in it. They may also give you a few small pond plants. 

7) Sit back & watch birdies enjoy your mini-pond.

You're not exactly going to get ducks, kingfishers or a vast variety of waders but every little helps ! Sadly I left my version at a previous residence but it worked a treat in a small garden. Even got frogs ! Less than an hours work to create it & if you hunt around less than £50 spent.

You can even go for the trug pond deluxe version where you buy 2 trugs, one larger & deeper than the other. You sink the larger one into the flower bed, line it with soil, put the smaller one in it, pack soil in between the 2 trugs & water until saturated, then proceed as above but instead of normal plants you can put some native bog/marsh plants, which will attract some different types of bugs to your garden.

Anyway good luck with your pond building effort.

 

Thanks Bella,  some great advice and choices there, definately going to build one now. Just got to persuade the girlfriend we won't get frogs in the house now:-)

Unknown said:

Im not so sure about free standing but you can build one above ground level maybe with sleepers and the line it. :P

Please don't use old wooden railway sleepers though as they are treated with chemicals & have chemical spillages from industrial use on them. These will leach into the water & damage it as a habitat for everything.

You could go to something like an architectural salvage yard and see if they have any bits of stone to make a rockery from and embed the pond into that. I've created a rockery in our garden using the remains of an old standstone wall from Mum and Dad's garden and could have put a small pond into that if I'd wanted.

Our garden is also clay, so building up is easier than digging down, but I still want to help drainage by putting a pond in elsewhere.

Thanks. There's some good ideas, now I'm thinking about a pond in a rockery.......at this rate I will need a larger garden:-)

Andy

Hi Phoenix,

I recently answered a similar post to this with this answer which might be of some use?...

"I also have clay and have recently dug out a koi pond by hand which was hard work especially as I managed to pick a spot which was obviously the spoil dump when the house was built!

The only way that I could even get a spade into the earth was to use a wrecking bar first to break it up, then I could shovel it out! Apologies if you already know but a wrecking bar is a five foot long solid iron bar with a sharp point on the end. If you push this into the soil with some force and wriggle it around a bit it will loosen up the soil making digging out much easier.

Your other alternative would be to built the pond part raised....depending on how deep you want it, dig out a hole 1'-2' deep and then use something like railway sleepers around this hole to double the depth. You may be thinking that you don't want the pond raised?...simply use all the soil you have dug out banked up against the outside of the sleepers to create a nice even slope up to the pond which you can sow with grass seed or plant with whatever takes your fancy!...If using sleepers remember to use untreated or wildlife friendly ones! I would also recommend using some polythene where the soil meets the wood to protect them from rotting... 

There are some pictures of my pond build and the decking on my gardening blog  (link below) which might help, Although my pond is part raised fairly high out of the ground they might give you some ideas? I have further pictures of different aspects of using sleepers like this so feel free to ask if they would be of use?"

Higgy

http://higgysgardenproject.blogspot.com/

we have a half barrel which although pretty small, does attract frogs & dragon flies & is capable of growing plenty of bog & pond plants

Hat I have thought about a barrel but it may just be a little small, good to know it works.

Higgy that's a serious project you've got going there!! I picked up a couple of ideas not just about the pond.

Thanks guys

That's great Phoenix, 

Have you got an idea in mind now?

I would be keen to know and then see how it develops....maybe a step by step post on here might be good to let us all see how it takes shape??