Neglected Pond - please help

[King Edward]

Holding tubs sound like a good idea for the plants (and any pond creatures you find, except adult amphibians which would be better moved into the undergrowth nearby).

The plant on the front right looks like Fool's Watercress, a good native pond plant but quite vigorous. Not sure about the grass/sedge type plants - don't look like either reeds nor bulrushes.

I don't know how you'd go about replacing the liner under the decking - maybe you need to take out the plants/sludge and then see what the situation is regarding the shape / depth profile of the pond and the condition of the liner. Doesn't look like the kind of job you want to start and finish all in one day.

Regarding the purpose of the pond, I assume it's primarily educational for e.g. pond dipping with the pupils?

If you were redoing the liner and had the chance to reprofile the pond, a reasonable design would be something like a maximum depth of 1.5'–2' at the deep end with a gradual slope/stepped design up to the shallow beach end. I'd also add a layer of play sand over the bottom, to protect the liner and to provide a low nutrient rooting medium for the plants - for a 5m x 3m pond a ton bag (0.8 m3) should be sufficient for a layer about 2" deep which would be fine. Cost something like £90.

[Norfolkjo]

Thanks for all your tips, have made a note of them! The pond is for educational use- I am hoping that once the Chair of Governors has got involved the momentum will be there to create a maintenance plan so that it is used again. Cheers, Jo P.S. I have heard about keeping a bucket of sludge to 'reseed the pond'. Is that a good idea and is one bucket enough?

[King Edward]

You don't really need to, especially since you'll be returning some of the plants which will have associated pond creatures on them. The pond will sludge up soon enough with leaves etc. anyway - no need to accelerate the process.

In fact, seeing as this is a school pond which will hopefully be there and monitored for quite a few years, it would be actually quite interesting to add as little animal life as possible and watch how the pond life develops (and changes over time). Within the first year, you should get Mayflies, Damselflies, Water Boatmen, Pond Skaters, Water Beetles and more all arriving spontaneously.

Have a look at this advice booklet from Pond Conservation: Creating Garden Ponds for Wildlife (download here)

Edit: One other thing that occurred to me - since the pond is surrounded on 3 sides by decking, you should try to ensure that the fourth side has some kind of undisturbed vegetation and is untrampled as much as possible. Long, rough grass growing down into the shallow water would be ideal, but it might need fencing/roping off so that visitors keep to the decking.

[Billabong Karen]

That is quite a job you've got ahead of you there! Take photos as the work progresses, and keep us updated (we love photos of other people doing pond work... ). And good luck! Karen

[GCN lova]

If i came by that pond i would just walk pass it not knowing it held water (i tend to run straight to them to look for pondlife ). i agree with King Edward about keeping a side free of children because amphibians wouldnt be able to get in or out.

[Norfolkjo]

Thanks to everyone for all the advice- the volunteers were amazing today, I cant thank them enough - and although our pond currently looks a bit empty we are well on the way to restoring it. Firstly the liner looks good!!! Secondly, we saw frogs and newts which sloped off under the decking, hopefully we wont have put them off! I cant even estimate the weight or volume of material we removed from the pond. Its about 3 half feet deep with ledges to stand planting baskets on (the old ones had been eaten by the plants they were meant to contain!) We found water soldiers and other pond weeds that I have kept and a lovely sloping beach end which we can replant and put a shingle layer to naturalise. We removed so much plastic rubbish! Much more to do but I dont feel that its such an impossible task! Many, many thanks to our Chair of Governors and his team from Aviva
P.S. The Head took some photos - I will see if I can get hold of one!

[Adam Cheeseman]

In a pond that size I would advise against putting the water soldier back in because that will rapidly expand to fill the space provided. Also avoid putting in anything with sharp tubers such as Typha (Greater Reedmace aka Bulrush) as these will puncture the liner and then you'll be back to square one. Personally I wouldn't put water lillies in such a small pond either as they will spread and shade out the underwater plants. Avoid overplanting when you put plants back as the plants will naturally spread anyway and you don't want a clogged up pond only a year or so after your efforts. Personally I 'd get rid of the Maple to stop leaf litter dropping into the pond.

Cheers,

Adam

[galanthophile]

Well done to you and all the volunteers for doing this. Lots of good advice here which I don't need to add to. Good luck with it in the future and it would be lovely to see a photo of the restored pond.