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During last year's end of April holiday, we hired a mini digger to build a pond and dug a rough hole.
We weren't expecting the next step to take over a year to get around to! Having decided that our rough hole in the ground wouldn't really cut it, we bit the bullet and hired 2 men who knew what they were doing with a digger, and who turned the rough hole into this:
They added a shelf along one side and a shallow area at one end which will become a bog garden. We covered the excavation with a layer of sand:
We created a wall to separate the pond from the bog garden:
My parents came over for a pond-lining party:
During the course of last Sunday we got the underlay and liner in place and began to fill the pond.
The bog garden got a filling with water to flatten the liner. This will be pumped out when we create the bog:
The other half and I still have to conclude our argument about where to build up a rockery for a waterfall that will go around/down the middle of/next to the bog garden and I think we need to increase the height of the wall and shore up a low point in the banking, but it's already been idyllic to sit on the edge of the pond in the sunshine, dangling our feet in the water and watching the sky reflected in the water's ripples, and the water reflected on the branches of the willows at the edge of the pond.
It's now payday and my fingers are itching to get out my bank card and splurge on plants! I can't wait to see it planted up and see what moves in!
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
I spent my lunch break today doing a mixture of gardening and bricklaying. I have the waterfall on its plinth which will be the centre of the new rockery.
I think I'll need to make the curve of the edge of the rockery a bit shallower so it's not such a steep-sided mound in the end. I can see several lunchtimes worth of lugging rocks and barrowing soil in my future!
In other parts of the garden, Mr Diggy Diggy Badger has been busy apparently tunnelling to Australia.
On the plus side we won't need to use the lawn edger on the path.
Just as well we're not the obsessively-manicured lawn types and don't mind sharing the garden with a bit of inconvenient wildlife.
Thanks, that photo was taken with a phone and I wasn't even looking for them, Jews just staring out the kitchen window and saw it whizzing about, I couldn't believe my luck. Grabbed my phone and to my delight there was 2 red damsels chasing each other for about 5 mins then they landed on a plant in the wee tiny bog garden bit that I have and they let me get remarkably close to take that photo, it made my day. One day I hope to see my very own wee damsel climb out my pond and take flight.
It seems all I've done for about a month is barrow rocks, soil and clay every lunchtime and after work before the clocks changed (who says working from home is all about watching Jeremy Kyle in your pyjamas?! It's HARD WORK!!). Where there used to a pub next door is now a construction site. I asked the foreman if I could have any clay they dug out to make my plant bed from. Before I knew it there was a dumper truck's worth on the driveway :O It's still half there!
I've also barrowed a ton bag of slate from the driveway to the pond and at least 3 ton bags of topsoil. The other half has started a new job working from an office rather than at home, so my burly man help is missing and all the shovelling and barrowing is down to me. I'm getting muscles on my muscles...!
The weather's been lovely this weekend so I decided to really crack on with making the rockery. I'd already changed the radius of the rockery curve to make the slope from the top of the waterfall more gentle. Before the weekend I had also put together the first row of stones. I spent some time first building up the front of the rockery, and having found an advice page on this site about hibernacula, I've added some drainage tubes into a rubble-filled space under the waterfall.
I've also left the area under the front of the waterfall loosely filled with bits of brick to hopefully attract some amphibians.
I started by building up the front of the rockery wall and integrating the waterfall sections, weighting them down as they're only fibreglass and have on one occasion already tried to migrate across the garden in high winds.
Even the odd rain shower didn't deter me.
But the bubbles on the pond surface kept me amused for a while.
By the end of the day, apart from being utterly knackered, I was pretty pleased with my work. It's hard creating something with compound curves out of dirt and rocks!
It took a lot of slow progress, standing back to look at the bigger picture, and the occasional flash of inspiration to get each step done. Also a lot of walking to my own personal open cast quarry (at least that's what it looked like when I'd finished barrowing a ton bag of slate...) to select just the right rock for each place. But all in all, I'm pretty chuffed with this!
The photo's fairly rubbish as it was nearly dark when I took it and the camera complained. The other side is nowhere near as finished, but at least I think I have a Plan now. That should keep me occupied for a few more lunch breaks!
Once the rockery's finished and the lower 'bog' beds are filled a bit more, it'll be time for the exciting bit... PLANTS!! The bed along the shelf is complete and pretty much full of clay (lumps of it anyway that I've been slowly flattening. I have thigh waders on order which will help me get into the pond to finish the bed. And no, there will NOT be photos!) so hopefully we can get some plants in there too to establish over the colder months ready for a glorious display in spring :)
WOW I salute you Maisie such a lot of work, but it will be wonderful. The waterfall area is brilliant. We used to put little trays of watercress in the waterfall to help with the algae, worked for us along with the planting. Can't wait to see it in the Spring
Of all creatures, man is the most detestable, he is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. ~ Mark Twain
Wow Good job! That is one nice looking pond.
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Hi Maisie, that's coming on really nicely!
Warden Intern at Otmoor.
Ladies and Gentlemen, at very long last and after many lunchtimes of carting soil and rocks, the rockery is DONE!
The hose is attached to the waterfall and ready for a pump
The ground around the pond is DISGUSTING! The whole area is clay and it's wellie-suckingly wet at the moment.
Now that the rockery is done, I just need to fill in the 'bog garden' beds (which you can see are holding water nicely!), put some clay under the liner along the edge by the willows to smooth out the ridge, then go mad with the debit card ordering some stones and pebbles to make some edging and construct the beach at the other end of the pond.
Well done Maisie. Brilliant stuff. I needed oxygen just reading your thread! LOL
Cheers, Linda.
See my photos on Flickr
Looks like a fabulous pond Maise and such a good size, congrats on all your hard work and once your planting is under way it will transform the whole water feature. We cheated and bought our pond from the RHS show (Tatton Park) last year and it included all the work to re-construct it in our back garden (so glad when I see the amount of work it took and 3 months to build) ! but when I see Grey Wagtail, Pied Wagtail wandering around the edge of the pond and various other birds taking their bath, I am glad we made the decision to include a pond; it is wonderful and the wildlife variety should improve now we have the water area. So after all your months of hard work, sit back, grab a cuppa and the bins + camera and relax ....... you deserve it :) Keep the photos going, it is so interesting.
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Regards, Hazel
That's one masterpiece Maisie, well done to you and all, can't wait for Spring to see the finished results with wildlife and plants.
Lot to learn