Nature on Your Doorstep Community

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

A pond at last!

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!

  • Well done, it will be worth all your effort, when all the wildlife move in. Looking forward to seeing your pond in the springtime, wonderful!!

    Really interesting, keep us posted:)

  • It was frozen over this morning. Spotted a pied wagtail learning to ice skate on it!

  • lol Maisie,   yes we had ice on our pond too which didn't thaw all day;   I had never seen the Wagtails in our garden  (Grey and Pied) before we got the water feature so it may be a sign of great things to come for you :)    good luck with everything and keep the photos coming !

  • Hazel, we've had pieds for years. The grey one I've seen once is a new visitor to the garden. Personally, I'm hoping for a flock of waxwings. I can dream, can't I?

    ROFL Alan! I'd think about it if you also had a team of sports masseurs, physios and chiropractors on standby!

    The edging paddlestones arrived yesterday. A companion seat arrived today and some cobbles and pebbles are coming tomorrow.

    I now have a long 4-day weekend ahead having booked some time off work. It's my birthday tomorrow and I'm dragging the other half off to the garden centre for an EPIC shopping trip. I'm far more excited at the prospect of having 4 days to get on with it than I am at getting yet another year older. I just hope my clay pile thaws out enough to move...!

  • Happy birthday, Maisie!  I hope your weekend goes really well.  I think the work you've done so far is very impressive!

  • Have a great day Maisie and Happy Birthday from Cheshire :)   x Hazy

     ps.  you can take the day off from pond preparation  LOL !


  • Thanks for the birthday wishes everyone! I didn't get anything done on the pond today, partly because of the still-frozen clay, partly because the ground is still part-frozen and part-waterlogged, partly because of the thick fog that's been here all day, but mostly because after a leisurely breakfast with the magpies, we had far too much fun doing an epic and very expensive garden centre trip. We now have a pond pump, pond vac and a super-cute granite froggy spitter to go at the far end of the pond. And all my stone has arrived. Fingers crossed for a bit of sunshine and a thaw.

  • Happy birthday from me too Maisie. Expensive things ponds LOL

  • Happy Birthday from me, I hope you had a lovely day. good to see you photo's of your pond

  • After another freezing day and a slightly-unexpected trip to Yorkshire yesterday, I have today finally had a chance to test out the waders and get back on with the pond. Fortified by a cuppa and bacon sandwich, I donned the waders and headed out into the pond, removing around 1cm thick ice on the way. Since my clay pile and bag of topsoil are still frozen, I decided to work on getting the beach ready. I would have liked to try out the pond vac, but vacuuming an iced-over pond wasn't going to happen either.

    I already had a couple of large stones and a piece of mesh in the pond. Today I started by adding some more stone (including an old half kerbstone) and a few more reclaimed piece of rabbit run/aviary mesh panel. The pond is proving to be a good way of recycling randomg bits of hardware around the garden! I also took the circular mesh that the paddle stones came in and re-used that.

    After a little bit of work, I had the foundations of a shallow beach.

    I brought round a first few cobbles to try making a start with.

    Deciding that that was going to work reasonably well, I barrowed the remaining 18 bags full of cobbles. If any part of the pond process was going to kill me, barrowing 20 bags of cobbles through several-inch-thick mud was it. It's amazing how much effort of leg and arm shoving a heavy barrow takes! In our case the barrow has to go from the top of the driveway, through a gate, down the muddly path past an aviary, down a muddy slope into the second bit of garden, then through the clay/mud around the pond.

    After a long slog of barrowing with the occasional break to lean on something and wonder whether I was going to be able to get it done, I had all the cobbles by the pond. I had just enough time and energy before it got dark to chuck some cobbles onto the mesh and finish a beach. There are some gaps to be filled and some fine-tuning to do, hopefully tomorrow, but it looks OK for the time being. If my clay finally thaws out I'll continue forming a 'mouth' to the end of the pond to extend the beach with pebbles as a beach/overflow.

    The beach as I left it. Note LOTS of leftover cobbles!