Part One - Pond Renovation
- Evans & Moose
- 9 hours ago
- 3 min read
When we first viewed our now farm, we took a stroll through the garden with the estate agent and came upon a little gate we asked what was through the gate for the estate agent to say he had no idea (bless him, he wasn't the most helpful but anyway). So, we decided to go on a little voyage of discovery. Through the tiny gate under the leaning archway was what looked like a tiny pond surrounded by overgrown shrubs and bushes. Ric's face lit up like he'd struck gold and it was one of the first project he wanted to tackle when we moved in!
So we started by stripping and tidying all the shrubs, they're like Audrey (you know... 'feed me, Seymour'), growing bigger and bigger every time you looked at them. But when they were finally tamed, we started to focus on the pond itself. We've four ponds on the farm but this is the only formal (ish) one so we wanted to make some sort of feature out of it. Imagine the joy when we discovered that the tiny pond was actually bigger than we'd first imagined, the grass had simply started to encroach. We dug out around the edge so we could actually survey the scene!
We already has fish, who were waiting patiently to go into their new home, so one of the main goals was making the pond deeper. Cue another day or two of digging our way to Australia. The liner was in pretty good condition so we were able to keep that (for now). We dug in a few different levels, making the deepest part the centre of the pond, with it gradually getting shallower towards one side. We'd noticed lots of wildlife, so having a shallower area means the frogs and and anything that might fall in can easily get out.
We then decided it needed to have some sort of edging, making it nice and obvious for anyone walking or mowing etc. We wanted a natural look so went for some slate, we're in Wales after all! There was so much slate around the farm it seemed a shame not to use it! There was so much that we managed to edge a couple of the cut flower beds with it too!
After we'd finished the massive stony jigsaw, hiding and covering any sharp edges of the stones, we added the pond pump back in and started to fill her up!
Next, we had a bit of an evaluation of the existing pond plants, some were fine but others had seen better days so anything dead went and we popped to our local garden centre and had a little shop! We wanted a couple of lilies to go with our already existing one to bring a bit of colour but to also provide protection and cover for the fish and wildlife that make the pond their home. We also added in a couple of oxygenating plants like Hornwort and a few marginal plants like iris for colour and a more natural look.
So, in these initial stages, we enhanced what was already there, but we have since decided that we still want to go bigger. We're going to make a few changes to depth and shape so once again we moved the fish and any other wildlife to another temporary space and starting pumping out the water and bailing what was left. Since doing all this, there's a cheeky heron that keeps flying over, so we're also going to make it heron proof! Which has been the main driving force for pond 2.0.
A couple of days ago, we took advantage of the weather and made in roads into this next stage of our pond renovation. Have a look at our little video to see where we're up to! We'll be sharing some advice in the next instalment on pond design, picking the right pump, and some do's and don'ts we've learnt from our project.
We'll keep you updated with our progress and are going to be posting a little series of videos to our new and upcoming YouTube! Hopefully sharing the steps we took to breathe new life into our pond, and practical advice for anyone looking to renovate their own backyard water feature will prove useful.
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