Wildlife pond - photos

Finally I have my long awaited for wildlife pond. Well the start of it at least. I not sure if it is faith, hope or experience that lets me believe that the man made hole full of muddy water will one day be a haven for wildlife!

The first step was to clear the front garden of all the paraphernalia that had turned it into a not so temporary builders yard.


The next to dig the hole. As we were digging we came across the soak away, so had to reposition the pond slightly. In our defence the pond was originally going to be in the back garden, which is why we put the soak away where we did, we also miscalculated exactly where we had put it!


The pond has a ridge around three sides to the depth of 9 inches, suitable for marginal plants. The fourth side gently slopes to form the beach area. Two of the sides are turfed and will hopefully be suitable for bulbs that like moist soil i.e snakes head fritillary and plants such as Lady smock.The liner at the back of the pond is edged with stones, which over lap the water to give shelter to the pond life, one juts out to provide a platform for birds and wildlife to drink from the pond ( now a favourite place for one of our cats). The whole of pond gently slopes to a depth of 2' 6''.


Between the pond and the fence we have built a bog garden. This has been the most difficult part as we have struggled to get the levels right, so as not to drain too much water from the pond. I think we are almost there.


I have been extravagant and ordered quite a few plants for both the pond and bog garden online. My excuse/reason is that it is getting late in the year for buying pond plants and we have so little time at the weekends to travel to the different garden centres looking for one plant here, one there, that it made perfect sense !!