Creating the Pond
Idea Behind the Pond
We have had a small pond hidden away behind the greenhouse for years and years but it had never managed to get frogspawn. I had seen frogs in it and in the garden but they had never spawned. The pond was very small, it was rectangular in shape and was only 1 foot wide about 2 and a half in length and not much deeper than 1 foot either so I decided that was most probably the problem.
Also we like wildlife and there was already birds etc in the garden that would use the pond for washing and drinking and any other passing wildlife.
Where the new pond was built we had always had grass. In the summer most of the time it was walkable unless it had been raining but in winter it was a bog so there was not much of a point to keeping it so we set out to make a pond like we had thought about for a few years.
We thought about where to place the pond and size/shape etc and finally decided on a simple oval shape slightly off to a side and that we would put gravel around it.
Finally we decided it was time to build it in April 2007.
Making the Pond
We started the pond in early april 2007 on a bright sunny morning (we luckily picked one of the best weeks of 2007). We originally attempted to take up the grass by hand which was very hard and after one row we gave up. So that day we ordered a turf remover which would arrive the next day. So the next day we got up bright and early and removed all the grass. After all the turf had been disposed of (which took many trips to the local recycling point) we started to dig a vague shape in the ground.
We continued to dig down, as we got deeper we made the shelfs and the beach area. We also had to make sure the sides were both at the same hight to stop the water level being uneven.(Notice the plank)
Once we had got to our desired depth (I think it was 68cm at the deepest point) we covered the whole area in sand to stop stones etc coming through the liner.
After the sand layer we added an underlay that we got with our liner (link). The underlay was a fabric that seemed pretty strong and the liner has so far (4 years on) not had any problems at all. It was a thick polyex liner that had a black side and a brown side. I chose to use the brown side becuase i thought it looked a bit more natural than black. While filling the pond I took off my shoes and socks and went in to it so I could flatten out the folds/creases.
Once the pond was filled we started to fill the beach with rocks and put the big flat stones around the edge. After a few days I added some plants that I had taken from the old small pond like the marigold and also bought some things like the lilies.
