Building a new pond

[Red Robin]

Originally Posted by Malcolm Banks

..and as you have worked out, you don’t need to. I have a bog garden running down one long edge of the pond, and a bog at one end. In both, the liner is continuous with that of the pond. The bog garden was created by lowering the rim of the pond slightly such that the water would overflow into the garden when the pond was reasonably well filled by rainwater or butt water. Because it was lined, the water was retained at the bottom of the bog garden. The bog was created by digging a hole at the end of the pond (not yet filled!) and taking the liner through a small gap and over the lip between them. The gap went down to ca 30 cm deep and ensured the water in the bog was always at the same level as the pond. I placed a large flat rock across the top of the gap and this protruded above the water line, acting like a dam, and then filled the bog with aquatic soil, before filling the pond, and the bog, with water.

Sorry if this is a little long winded but you can throw it into your mix of options – I think the part of the pond’s life you are approaching is a mix excitement tinged with anxiety, the former in anticipation of joys to come, and the latter because a whole lot of work could go belly-up – but keep the faith, if you follow the advice on here and other places it should be fine
M

....I wish I had discovered this site before I created my wildlife pond! Such useful build-a-bog info and advice . No regrets though - Mine has evolved an adjacent rockery instead.

[Dragonyka]

Thanks for the (timely) info Malcolm - I must admit having thought I wanted to put a bog garden on the end of the pond I wasn't entirely sure how to go about it, so thanks for the info. Where did you get aquatic soil from? I don't recall seeing it in the garden centre, although as I haven't looked for it specifically, it could be there and I just haven't seen it.

I realise now that I started digging a hole for my pond without a firm shape in mind, and without considering lots of thing - planting shelves for example! I currently have a hole in the ground with planting shelves and was only standing looking at it this evening thinking 'now how am I going to do a bog?' It's not exactly the sort of thing you can change easily once it's finished, is it!

[Kayleigh]

Make the shelves 1ft wide as mine are smaller and the planting baskets fall off so I had to plant into the soil aquatic compost I go from an aquatic pond centre there are lots on the web that do mail order but do a search for your area..
Don't put garden soil in as its full of nutrients and will encourage algae growth.
The planted baskets also help wildlife get out if they fall in..

[Dragonyka]

Originally Posted by Kayleigh

Make the shelves 1ft wide as mine are smaller and the planting baskets fall off so I had to plant into the soil aquatic compost I go from an aquatic pond centre there are lots on the web that do mail order but do a search for your area..
Don't put garden soil in as its full of nutrients and will encourage algae growth.
The planted baskets also help wildlife get out if they fall in..

Thanks - I've been busily re-modelling the pond this evening and I don't think I've left the shelves that wide. More remodelling on the cards for tomorrow.

I've just been reading another thread about making hibernating places for amphibians... I can't find the post right now, but another poster (sorry I can't remember who it was) suggested a bank a little away from the pond, and I was wondering about amalgamating the two ideas and constructing the bank using logs/stones/stuff (as my daughter is fond of saying!) for the core of the bank and covering with soil which I can plant on. What do you think?

I'm glad the weather's going to be nice this weekend as I seem to have a fair bit of work to do - although luckily there isn't actually an awful lot else I can be doing on the allotment at the moment.

[Kayleigh]

Originally Posted by Dragonyka

Thanks - I've been busily re-modelling the pond this evening and I don't think I've left the shelves that wide. More remodelling on the cards for tomorrow.

I've just been reading another thread about making hibernating places for amphibians... I can't find the post right now, but another poster (sorry I can't remember who it was) suggested a bank a little away from the pond, and I was wondering about amalgamating the two ideas and constructing the bank using logs/stones/stuff (as my daughter is fond of saying!) for the core of the bank and covering with soil which I can plant on. What do you think?

I'm glad the weather's going to be nice this weekend as I seem to have a fair bit of work to do - although luckily there isn't actually an awful lot else I can be doing on the allotment at the moment.

When you construct the edge/bank I had to re do mine as I got folds are you using a rigid or flexible liner..
I had to put bricks under the liner to support it and found the bricks were used as the frogs and newts went in-between the liner and the brick..

[Red Robin]

On the subject of hibernating and shelters, a pile of logs criss-cross raised is an easy way. Not too far from the pond but not at the water's edge.

I also got lucky and found a large smashed ornament which makes a perfect underwater 'igloo' and even has star apertures to a night sky. Very romantic for Mr Frog to woo the ladies



^ Before installing. (In the bird bath tray)



^ The Star Dome. Visitors of the human species always wonder what on earth it is.

You could use a broken ceramic pot.

[Malcolm Banks]

Yes it is certainly worth taking plenty of time and consulting widely on pond design before getting stuck into digging, but I guess you are past that phase aleady. If you are putting a 3x2 metre pond on a 30x10 metre plot, you should have room for a nice size bog and/or bog garden, or do you not have a blank canvass in the plot? Maybe a photo of your plot would help?

Another feature that we (my wife took an active interest in the design and she was in charge of researching and buying for the plant side of things) have found very useful for both plants and animals were the planting pockets, dug in an oval shape about 75cm long with gentle shelving to 30-40 cm deep (but less after sand, fleece and liner layers), either side of the shallow pebbly beach area (10-20 cm depth of water). I filled these after filling the pond by inverting a bag of aquatic soil and gently easing the soil out of the cut side. I strongly suspect that many of the amphibs that overwinter in the pond, do so in and around these pockets, since, being in close connection to shallow water they should retain satisfactory O2 levels, especially since some of the plants we put into the pockets were oxygenators. I would be interested to hear others’ views of planting pockets. It is a bit fiddly folding the liner into the pockets but this may answer your amphibian hibernation question.
Aquatic soil should be available at pond shops and some garden centres – I hear it is a bit of a rip-off and may not actually be necessary but others may have more information on that than I have?
If you plan to add the liner this weekend you could find the cold weather makes it difficult to fold easily (not sure what liner you are planning to use?) so it might be worth waiting (I know it’s hard) for a few more degrees above zero.
Keep up the good work
M

[Malcolm Banks]

Originally Posted by Dragonyka

I've just been reading another thread about making hibernating places for amphibians... I can't find the post right now, but another poster (sorry I can't remember who it was) suggested a bank a little away from the pond, and I was wondering about amalgamating the two ideas and constructing the bank using logs/stones/stuff (as my daughter is fond of saying!) for the core of the bank and covering with soil which I can plant on. What do you think?

Sorry, didn't read your bit above about amphibian hibernation habitat properly when I made my last post (I was preoccupied with underwater issues), but I did suggest earlier that you could use the soil from the pond to make a mound which you could retain with logs, and then make a planted rockery on/in the face of the mound. From your plan above it sounds like you may be talking about a hibernaculum, now that's another story.
M.

[Red Robin]

LOL The way this is going, there ain't gonna be no vegetables planted and growing for a loooong time!

The first allotment in the UK to become 100% a wildlife pond and environs!

[tom00_uk]

if you dont want to spend a small fortune on Aquatic soil you could either use

pea gravel
heavy soil
cat litter (must be clay based and not feature clumping agents or fragrance etc)