Tuesday August 02, 2005

Three ponds and a stream

I have always wanted a pond. At my parents old house in Diss we had one with fish in it. So when we moved to Twyford the back garden seemed to be crying out for a water feature. This was to be pond number one.

It is quite small, and is ten years old. It has a lily which does not do so well. It tends to have a lot of wildlife, frogs, loads of newts, water boatmen, pondskaters and of course snails. It amazes me how these water loving animals and insects find the pond but they do. We have lots of pond plants and there is a shelf that goes round the ponds edge for marginal plants. Terry helped and advised me on how to build the pond over email which was quite a feat. In the picture you can see the water soldier plants. These strange plants have spikes for leaves and sink to the bottom in the winter.

The front garden where pond number two is was always a mess. Grass that was never green and very little grew there. So pond number two appeared. It has lovely lilies the best of all three and a dozen flowers can be found in the height of summer. The rest of the front is covered in a membrane with stones/gravel on top of it to keep the weeds down. We have heathers and many other plants that have done very well. Despite the closeness to the road, newts seem quite happy in the pond.

So the final pond ( but not water feature!) was to be a stream. This was harder to do as I have three small waterfalls, the final one deposits the water into the reservoir which is a small pond itself. I also had to build a gradient on the site too. A pump is in the pond that has a pipe that leads to the top segment of the stream. Turn the pump on and the water trickes down the stream. When the stream is not running there is water in each segment. The main problem with it is evaporation, so the whole thing needs topping up very often. It also suffers a lot from the blanket weed as there is no plant cover on the water. It is a case of going in with your fingers and pulling it out. The little bridge over the stream separates the pergola area from the main garden. The pond has a lily in it. The edges are loose pebbles of different sizes and the stream's liner is shielded from view by the pebbles.

The final water feature is a three tier barrel in the back of the garden which trickles water down from the top most barrel to the bottom one. None of the ponds have fish in as the local herons would have a feast of them and I do not want to net the ponds. The last two ponds use butyl rubber as the liner the type that lasts the longest. I have used a fleece to protect it and also a layer of sand which was applied to the the hole before the fleece/liner was put in prior to filling. There is nothing difficult about making a pond, if people are going to walk around the edge you must make sure the edging is well cemented in else a nasty accident could occur.

If you have room for a pond I would say it is a nice feature to a garden. Some say if you have kids you should not have a pond but I think with care the two can mix. My nephews had never seen a toad, frog or a newt and now know what these creatures look like. You can also get some very attactive plants be careful as some are very invasive. One of my favourites has lovely purple flowers and a nice peppermint smell to its leaves. As also can be seen apart from the blanket weed the water is clear, a good sign the pond has a health balance I think. The pond is a providing a home for our hard pressed wildlife and the birds like it to use as a bath!