Day Three
It was not as cold this morning as yesterday morning: just above freezing at 0.2C. Today the main job was to get the liner and marginal shelf put in the raised pond. The method was to put the liner in first, and then build up the inside of the pond with blocks, odd bits of rubble and concrete. This means that very little liner will show at the end.
Richard chiselled out a hollow in the middle of the pond, making the maximum depth about 60 cm. This is to provide some protection for the inhabitants against extreme cold. I am not currently planning to put any fish in the pond, but I may do so later. Then he put in the liner. Then it started raining, despite the fact that it had been told not to do this by the Met Office. This is why my photograph has a tarpaulin over the pond.
The pond liner is put in place - just as it starts raining
Richard then started on the marginal shelf, which I had estimated needed to be 20 cm below the water surface. But I realised I hadn’t checked this, and I put a probe into the temporary pond to see how deep its shelf was, which I think is about the right height. It was about 24 – 27 cm. So the marginal shelf needed to be deeper, especially allowing for the fact that the water level will not always be at its maximum. I can always put pots on bricks if they are too low down, but can’t do anything about it if they are too high up. So we managed to do a slight change of plan, which will make the marginal shelf about 27 cm below the surface, which will do nicely.
Marginal shelf in raised pond
The edging for the lawn is now almost complete. As I expected, it had to be raised quite a bit above ground level at the back, but this was mainly because there was a big dip in that area. There will need to be a slight slope down towards the back fence, but nothing too dramatic. The main thing was to get the lawn flat as I don’t think it would have looked nearly as nice if it had been sloping.
In my final photograph, taken as the light was fading, you can see the shallow, ground-level pond has now been dug out. It’s difficult to see the depth from the photograph, but the deepest area is right next to the diagonal of the raised pond. There is a gentle slope from this flat, deep area, leading to the edge in all directions. Plants can be stood on the deepest area. Using Pythagoras, I was able to calculate that each of the three short sides needed to be 1.76 cm to make them all the same length. This worked on the ground as well as on paper. In this picture you may also be able to see that the soil from the shallow pond has been put to good use building up the ground level around the lawn edging.
The shallow pond has been dug out
Richard and Mike think that I should not dig over the lawn, because the rubble in it provides good drainage. Maybe that is true, but I may dig it over anyway because I don’t think it’s in very good health, whatever the reason. But for now I will put my tarpaulins over the soil and mow the existing grass as normal, because it’s more important to work on the rest of the garden first. I am already formulating a plan in my head, which I shall write in this blog, and then totally ignore, as usual.