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Back in 2005 when we moved into this place the garden flooded a few months after our arrival and half the garden was under water. Behind us was (and still is) a large expanse of unused, boggy grass between us and a housing estate. We asked the council and the housing association about getting it drained, but both denied ownership and the council's environmental health officer suggested we take over the land (which is un-claimed in the land registry) and drain it ourselves. It's taken us nearly 6 years but having had a temporary chain link fence, then more permanent concrete gravel board wall up, we've finally got round to doing something about the drainage (which has actually been much better anyway since the warehouse over the road had some trees removed and the sewer pipes were upgraded). What better way to improve drainage and create habitat than by making a pond??
As it was, flooded and used as a den/dumping ground for the local kids and fly-tippers:
A few weeks ago the whole area was very overgrown with 2 willows that had sprung up and very long grass. We've strimmed the grass, sadly evicting a couple of toads (who we've promised an awesome pond by way of compensation). It;s great to see we have some wildlife before we've even got any water!
And we've cleared out several tonne builder's bags worth of bricks, glass and plastic bottles, golf balls, most of a bedstead, PVC window frame, kitchen cupboard doors, one interior door, the rubber bit of a vibrator (yes, really!), socks, shoes... you name it!
There's a natural bower between the two willows that (if my dream comes true!) will get some decking / a pier looking over the pond:
Once the strimming and clearing was done, we hired a micro digger over the Royal Wedding weekend and got to work. After a LOT of hard work, we've been left with... a daunting and scarily large hole!
The photos don't really do it justice. It's about 10 x 7 x 0.3-0.5m depending on which bit you measure. There's a lot of conflicting advice on the net about depths of wildlife ponds, ranging from the 30cm mentioned in the eminently sensible link from the RSPB staff on another thread (http://www.pondconservation.org.uk/advice/makeapond/makeagardenpond) to ridiculous 1.5m suggestions! We need to do a lot of levelling and building of banks round our large hole to work out how deep the maximum and minimum are, but I would like to get the digger back and dig out the middle to a greater depth for extra safety in winter and to put some deeper plants like water lilies in. There's a slope at one end of the pond which will be a pebble shore for overflow, bird bathing etc. I'd like also to use some of the bricks we dug out to make some shelves for marginal plants too, and at the other end a shallow / bog section with a raised slate type fall down the middle.
Apart from actually doing some belated measurements, can anyone suggest anything we need to do / should do / would be nice to do?
Maisie
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Hi Maisie,
Fantastic, do you now lay claim to the land and by that now own that area?
Sorry I have no idea how something like that works.
One of my friend has a shallow ponds that still harbour lots of wildlife from frogs and toads to dragon and damselflies.
But I think I read somewhere that frogs spend the winter months at the bottom of ponds, I guess the deeper the pond the more unlikely to freeze further down and the frogs would probably prefere that.
Fantastic news about laying claim on the land though, at least it's in good hands :-)
I'd be very interested in seeing things progress,
H
Higgy is red hot on ponds, Maisie and Andrewa too - me I have one but Himself's in charge of that. Find Higgy's page and ask for help and I'm sure he'd be glad to give it, he offered someone else one to one advice. The engineering's a bit beyond me, I'm afraid:-( Good luck. There's also the water garden forum, I'm sure that'll have advice too.
Unknown said:But I think I read somewhere that frogs spend the winter months at the bottom of ponds, I guess the deeper the pond the more unlikely to freeze further down and the frogs would probably prefere that.
I think it's the males that lurk at the bottom of ponds in winter - and they suffocate as well as freeze if the pond is too shallow and frozen over as well as solid - they need oxygen.There's a site called Froglife that has/had info on that.
Hi Kezsmum,
I shall have a look at that site :-)
Thanks H and Kezsmum for the info so far! H, to claim the land you need to be using it for 12 years, so we have a little way to go yet.
As far as I know, it needs to be at least 0.8m deep so that it doesn't completely freeze in the winter :)
'Dip a dee dah, dip a dee ay, we're not seeing any birds to-day...'
Hello Maisie and All,
Firstly let me say well done for what looks like a great wildlife project and managing to get everyone involved which is always difficult!
The depth of the pond is actually really important as you need to give enough water to prevent the whole thing freezing and therefore allowing your wildlife to overwinter safely. Some people will tell you that you can get away with less depth but I am of the opinion that an area of at least 3feet deep should be provided for this reason.
Your other consideration with depth will depend on what you actually want to attract to it or put in it, if you are considering fish then depth becomes a much more important factor in my view and generally I would want an absolute minimum of 3feet and over a much bigger area of the pond. Fish will require this depth to overwinter but you also have to consider the build up of harmful gases form rotting vegetation etc which can build up under the ice and potentially kill the fish and other wildlife.
As the area easily floods what are your considerations for lining the pond? If you use rubber liner water rising underneath it will cause it to lift up and then potentially weaken it and in the worst case scenario cause it to tear. It also sounds like you plan on doing a lot of planting which is great and just what you should be trying to achieve in a wildlife pond but again with a rubber liner you would need to consider what plants/trees you plant and their proximity to the pond for potential punctures to the the liner? Making a natural clay lined pond could be your answer as it will flood and naturally fill up, also you can be much more adventurous with your planting and in some cases plant directly into the pond itself. Clay lining is quite a specialist skill, although you can do it yourself I understand it is quite tricky so advice would be required from someone who has done it?
I'm certainly no expert on the subject but have been building ponds for friends and family and keeping fish for about twenty years so have learnt a little from my mistakes and experiences!!
I think your first step now would be to actually take a step back and draw a plan (if you haven't already?) and factor in everything you want to include i.e. size, depth, change of depths, access to the pond and around the site, seating areas/deck, bog areas, plant positions and more importantly big shrubs and positions of big trees etc. Remember that shrubs and trees grow so factor in for the size they will become in 2/5/10yrs time.
Also another careful consideration for you is the dreaded health & safety (sorry) but depending on who has access to the land you may want to consider fencing, and life saving buoyancy aids?
Again not being exactly sure who will access and use the facility have you considered disabled access? Could be a way to get a bit of funding to help you out also?
If I can be of any further help or you want to chat over any ideas send me either a comment on my page on here or preferably click onto my blog below and leave a comment, this will come through to my email address and I will get back to you with other contact details.
Hope this helps a bit?
Thanks for that, Higgy! That helps a lot. Also thanks for the tip, Tern.
We're not thinking about fish - it's something more to feed, something more to worry about, and I don't know how well they'd get on with native wildlife.
The water table is possibly a bit high around there, but the waterlogging problems aren't all due to the water table. A lot of the problem is the heavy clay soil which doesn't allow for much drainage. I did consider a clay-lined pool, but there's not as much clay at the bottom of the hole as I thought there would be, so I think a liner would be better, although expensive (but less hard work!). The people at the garden centre mentioned the problems of the liner being pushed up by a high water table. We've banked up the edges of the pond with the spoil so the bottom of the pond isn't as deep as it would be if we'd just dug down from the lowest point. I'm also aware of tree roots. The willows lean over a lot so their main root structure should be quite far from the pond and lower down. I'm not planning to plant anything too big near the pond, both for shading and for root reasons.
There will be no-one having access to the site except me, my other half and any friends or family we have over, so hopefully we won't be needing any safety measures although if the pond ends up being too deep a life ring might be a good idea! Permanent access will eventually be made via a cut out in our hedge at the end of the garden path and should all be flat and paved/gravelled/decked. My Mum with her 2 new hips can cope as it is, and there are no steps (just a slope down) so it's reasonably access-friendly!
I did draw some diagrams which I'll put in here. Apologies for my lack of frog drawing ability. My head-on view of what should be a frog water spitter and a waterfall looks more like a giant angry bee on top of its hive!
Currently the dream plan looks nothing like the large hole in the ground, so I think some hard work and shovelling will be needed this weekend!
Hi maisie,
I've had a quick look at this and have a couple of observations but am a little short on time right now so will log back on later and send a proper reply rather than try and fit it into two minutes!
Speak later....
Hi again I'm back,
Just wrote you a reply which took me about an hour to compose , then my computer crashed and I lost the lot! LOL
I'll start again!!....
Firstly I have real concerns about those two willow trees as if you intend to use liner they have real potential to do it some damage. Willows are notorious for having a large root system which will quite literally be attracted towards and seek out any water source that they can find. If planted too close to a house they can cause massive damage to foundations so would make short work of your rubber liner!
What sort of liner are you intending to install? My advice would be; don't just go with what your local garden centre 'want to sell you' do some research on line and get what suits your purpose best. Also worth mentioning is the weight of a large piece of liner (it is very heavy!!) Shopping on line might not only give you better choice and price but you will also get delivery right to your site which is really worth considering as big liners can be quite a handful and as stated extremely heavy.
Generally your choices are:-
Butyl, which is the old original rubber pond liners. Butyl is still very good and generally is quite robust and easy to install. the downside is that it is very expensive.
PVC, is basically a plastic type liner and unless you are on a really really tight budget I wouldn't recommend it for a wildlife pond.
EDPM, is a synthetic rubber and is quickly winning a lot of respect from pond keepers as it gets better known. EDPM is generally quite strong, is U/V stable, has good longevity and is usually priced between rubber and PVC.
The choice is yours but do some research before making the final decision. I would recommend that you go for at least 1mm thick liner or above if you can get it as it may need to with stand visiting wildlife which will show it no respect at all.
As your site will be planted up I can't stress enough the importance of using some really good quality pond underlay underneath your liner, in fact it's worth checking the details of your pond liner guarantee as some manufacturers recommend that you use their underlay underneath otherwise your guarantee will be void! As an example my current pond is lined and I have a layer of sand, then 2 layers of underlay and finally a layer of old carpet which the liner sits on. I'm happy that the liner is well protected and no stones or roots can wok their way through the liner. Remember that once filled with gallons of water there will be immense pressure exerted on the liner that will find any twig, stone or root if it can!
You say that you don't want to have to feed fish but what about considering some small native species such as sticklebacks? If you want them to be visible then Golden Rudd are a great introduction as they feed on the surface taking flies and gnats etc which is fun to watch. Bottom feeders such as Tench might also be worthy of consideration. The beauty of these species is that once the pond is planted, established and mature they will pretty much look after themselves and I think add another dimension which you would naturally find in a wildlife pond?
It's good to see you want some moving water in the form of a waterfall which will help to keep the water moving and oxygenated. What about developing this area even further by creating some natural filtration in the form of reed beds etc which the water has to pass through before tumbling back into the pond? This will really improve the water quality and be beneficial to the ecosystem you are trying to create?
The only other thing I would comment on is that it might be worth considering where the wildlife will visit/enter the pond and make sure that no liner is exposed otherwise sharp claws and beaks could puncture it?
Sorry one last point, when finishing your groundwork and getting ready for the liner please do use a spirit level/straight boards etc and make doubly sure that the top of the pond is 100% level otherwise the pond liner will be exposed above the water level which looks horrible and is always almost impossible to disguise.
Apologies if any of this is a little bit like teaching you to 'suck eggs' but I thought it better to get over as much as I could then you can pick out what is relevant to you.
Best regards