Great Plans for the pond
Well, at the end of the last blog we left you with this: a drainage ditch, a muddy pond and bits of pond liner. Where next?
One of the major mistakes we made last time we constructed the pond was that we hadn’t thought through the pond marginal area and how we would keep it maintained. This time, and one of our main activities over the winter, was coming up with ideas how the pond would fit into the rest of the garden, what its immediate surrounds would be, and how we would stop the grass encroaching into the area.
We quite quickly came to the conclusion that we wanted a gravel and rock surround, but of course then came the problem of keeping that enclosed without the inevitable mix of grass and gravel. Up stepped the humble sett. If you don’t know how we ‘rescued’ these you can read more in my blog entry Spring Work – Summer Relax. We decided that we’d circle the whole pond and marginal area with the setts. Question was – would we have enough?
An Ox-bow lake?
Then, I came up with another idea. I decided that I wanted the pond to look as if it had been left behind as an ox-bow lake as part of a meandering river. Then the idea came that the area on top of the drainage ditch was to be the dried out river bed of this meandering river. This also served another purpose – we could, at a glance, tell exactly where the drainage ditch was.
So, this was all coming together nicely: we sorted defining the area, the ‘story’ of the pond and river; now we decided we wanted somewhere to sit. Yes, you are quite right, we have already got 2 patios in the garden. However, as we had to buy palettes of patio slabs last year we inevitably had some left over. The planning for patio number 3 had started. This wasn’t going to be a big patio it was just enough for 2 chairs and a wee table. The location was also quite obvious too – it was to be in the last bit of the garden to get sunshine in the early evening.
Well, with that all sorted – now the really hard work could begin.
This blog was originally published on:
and subsequently modified on: