A new part of the garden we have been designing and working on this year is the Scottish native garden. Once the new office was finished we wanted to landscape the bit of ground between it and the drive, not least because it is the first thing you see when you drive up the drive and draw up in front of the house. For 13 years this has been an unsightly patch of weedy waste ground where things got dumped.
So how do you build a pond? It really depends on what style and design you want. We wanted a natural style of pond that would fit into the native garden and provide homes for small creatures and be big enough to make a visual impact. Firstly you have to decide where it is going to go and start digging a hole! The most important thing is to make sure the sides are level all the way round, otherwise you'll have water escaping and liner showing which spoils the whole effect. This series of pictures shows the process we went through with this pond.
Here we have started trimming the liner to size and burying the edges under soil and put in place bags of gravel and cobbles for beach at this end where it merges into the gravel of the drive. We used three different sizes of gravel and cobbles to give a more natural look.
The border along the left side has had compost added and some plants planted. Two big pieces of stone have been put in place as stepping stones along the back of the pond to access the seating area. Once the rain stops we can finish burying the pond liner and borders to the right of the pond.
When the water has settled in a couple of weeks time, we'll introduce some aquatic plants and when it stops raining we'l get the rest of the native garden round the pond dug over and planted up and another area in the garden or mini garden will be finished.
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| Fine tuning the levels and depth of the pond, this pond has 3 different depths |
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| I added a thick layer of sand to protect the liner, especially as this is stoney soil |
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| Next lay in some underlay. This can be old carpet, carpet underlay or a ready made pond liner. We recycled some old office carpeting |
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| Yes it was freezing! Its Scotland in October, even if the weather has been unseasonably warm! Someone has to get the short straw to make sure all the creases are smoothed out as the pond fills |
The border along the left side has had compost added and some plants planted. Two big pieces of stone have been put in place as stepping stones along the back of the pond to access the seating area. Once the rain stops we can finish burying the pond liner and borders to the right of the pond.
When the water has settled in a couple of weeks time, we'll introduce some aquatic plants and when it stops raining we'l get the rest of the native garden round the pond dug over and planted up and another area in the garden or mini garden will be finished.
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