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Wildlife Garden
Garden Plan
The pond
Photographs of the Wildlife Garden - creating the pond
May 2007
The first job was excavating the pond using a digger. The sub-soil is thick clay; there used to be a brick works in the area - we can see why!
September 2007
The Women's Working Party! Here a few of us ladies spent a couple of hours digging out the vegetation that has grown inside the pond in preparation for the BTCV who are going to help us create the pond.
This photo shows our site manager moving some of the donated carpet that will be used as an underlay.
The BTCV have arrived! Unfortunately they didn't have very good weather and did much of the work in the rain. But that didn't deter them or the audience of local school children.
This next two pictures show the excavations at the end of day one - a very muddy job!. The guys used some of the soil they dug out to create an rim around the pond to make it more noticeable.
The next day was much better weather-wise and the pond is lined with sand and carpet.
The red carpet was covered with the pond liner and then the interliner was put on top (to stop animals damaging the liner and the pond leaking) and it the pond was filled with water from the river.
The last job the BTCV did was to cover the interliner with soil.
Over the winter we have kept the pond clear of weeds and debris. One of our volunteers has even built a wooden punt to gain access to the middle of the pond - he hasn't fallen in yet!
We we shortly be creating a bog garden adjacent to the pond as well as plant up the pond with donated plants (see below) and hopefully build our pond dipping platform.
In the Spring 2008 a pond dipping platform was built and planting began both in the pond and on the margins. The photograph below shows the pond in March 2009. There is a variety of life in the pond including newts, frogs, insects and goldfish (although we'd rather people didn't put them in the pond as they eat invertebrates and birds eat them!). We even have a pair of ducks living on the pond.
Below is a photo of the ducks living in our wildlife garden. Captured here on the bog garden.
