Helen's Garden Renovation Project

After I had finished waterproofing the shallow pond and mending the water butts, we had lots and lots of rainfall, which I was very pleased about because it meant that my repairs could be thoroughly tested. I was only partly pleased about the results, though. One of the water butts appears to have been completely mended, with no signs of any leaks. The other is better than it was, but is still losing some water. I think it had a bigger crack in it than the other one, and putting a second patch over the crack may be successful.

As for the pond, well, it’s also better than it was. The join between the mortar and the pond liner is not at a constant level, and over to the left hand side of the pond, the water line is above the join. In other places it is below the join. I will have to observe the level of the pond over some days as it gets topped up with rain from time to time, and try to work out where it is leaking from. The liner and the mortar appear to be sound, so the most likely place is where there is a fold in the liner and it is harder to get a watertight join. In this particular example I have accidentally left a gap in the sealant, so this could be a place where the water is leaking out.

A fold in the pond liner

However, this setback is not going to stop progress, as the shallow pond is still usable and I am not going to empty it out again any time soon to try another repair. So I went over to the temporary pond and got ready to start battle.

The temporary pond

When you have a mass of vegetation like this, it is too heavy to pull out of the pond in one lump, so I had to break off bits, and I also had to saw through the water lily’s rhizome. I wanted to save some of the plants and put them in quarantine in the shallow pond. The reason for the quarantine is that the pond contains the highly invasive New Zealand Pygmy weed, which I have decided not to keep in my new ponds. I did, however, want to keep the Ponderia cordata, Iris laevigata ‘Midnight’ and the water lily Rose Magnolia. So I broke off sections of them, washed them well to remove all the pondweed that I could see, and planted them in new containers. The pond is too shallow for the water lily to be happy, but I am hoping that once it’s out of quarantine, I can put it in the raised pond, which it should like a lot better.

Plants in quarantine in the shallow pond

And then I tipped all the rest of the vegetation out of the temporary pond. I can now tip out the rest of the water and any creatures lurking in it, and start filling the hole in.

The wreckage left after removing the plants from the temporary pond

I hope that the displaced creatures will turn up in the shallow pond. The pondskaters have already moved in.