Siting a pond on a sloping garden

Looking very pretty as well as being good for wildlife. And it’s less than two years old. Fantastic! Your plant lists is very similar to mine. No midwife toads for me though but maybe newt tadpoles as we’ve spotted some of very different sizes and pretty sure we had only one frog spawning.

 

Yup! Just 13 months in those photos. I still can’t believe it!

There’s a reason the plant list looks similar - I used the two links you gave me as my reference guide! So all bought plants are on those lists. The rest I either had already, or was given from my friend’s pond...

 

Some of the wildlife seen today....


A pair of small red damsels, laying some eggs in the shallows


I was sitting next to the pond having a cuppa this afternoon, and suddenly realised that something was emerging! Looks like a female (edited: I think my spellchecker is obsessed with Brexit - “remain” indeed!!) emperor dragonfly to me, but I’m a beginner when identifying these fine fellows. (A blue-tailed damselfly on the lower leaf)


Hard to make out, but some of our tadpoles are developing back legs!

I don’t know if there’s a hive nearby, but every afternoon we have a possy of honeybees drinking amongst the stems of a creeping thyme


Another couple of shots of the dragonfly, after the wings “clicked” open. Yes, I heard them open!

 

So pleased!!
Hubby just said “not yet” when I mentioned the Belgian conservationists (looking for midwife toad tadpoles in our pond) suggested a second pond ....

I have always wanted a chain of ponds...!!

 

The pickerel weed is coming into flower at last!


And the dwarf rush has a, um, rush...!

 

Some general shots of the pond, 15 months old...

From slightly below the pond.


Looking across the pond, with the wildlife meadow in the background


For some reason, this waterlily has grown a bit of a stem above the water.


There are three waterlillies in the pond, one large-leaved, two small leaved. The large leaved one has the current flower, one of the small-leaved is white, the other a pale pink.

Two different forms of purple loosestrife. The short one bought from a garden centre, the tall one came from a friend’s wildlife pond...

 

I hope you don’t mind me moving your comment to this thread @Logan - I thought it made more sense....

....strange you should mention a bog garden, as I was thinking about putting one alongside the pond! The question is - which side?
To the right of the pond, as you look up the garden. This is about 10-15cm above the pond level. It’s where the slimy photo of the “grass” was taken. I’d probably go between the “dry waterfall” and the cherry tree

to the left of the pond, looking up. A shorter distance to the border behind, a little more shady, and the grass is a little better. The Bog garden would be on a similar level to the pond surface area.



A shot showing the right-hand site, and the gradient

...and to the left.

With both options, I would look to do some sort of stepping-stone path through to the bench. Probably with some of the cobble-stones that I have... the bog garden would be separate, in that the water would not flow from the pond to the bog garden, or from the bog garden to the pond. They would be adjacent, and look linked, but would not be.

What do you think?

 

Sounds like an excellent plan . And when you have finished you can come and dig me a large pond and adjoining bog garden

 

I’ve been mulling over this, and I’m drifting towards putting the bog-garden on the right hand side.
This will link in the cherry tree (and tiny gooseberry bush) to the area - at the moment it’s like Billy-no-mates! It will “feed in” via the waterfall and the raised edge, into the more heavily-planted side of the pond. The meadowsweet and mint will probably very quickly colonise it!

Does this make visual sense?

 

Sounds good to me. I have always found it helpful to try ideas out on the ground as well though - using washing line to indicate a border, a cut up plastic bag for stepping stones, a garden chair for a shrub, etc etc. They give a sense of scale at least and can be left in position while you go and look again from the far end of the garden, upstairs window, and so on.

 

I thought it was time to post some pond updates!


the pond from the drive side, showing the “lush” end


from below the pond, looking up the garden


The lush end lis living up to its name!


We currently have 11 water lily flowers!


the sloping end of the pond, deliberately kept a little more bare.


I don’t know what this tall multi-leaf plant is just to the right of the water mint. It piggy-backed into the pond, and seems to be on some form of world domination ...


Another shot of the flowering lilies

 

@Sian in Belgium Wow, your pond is absolutely beautiful, and look at all those lilies!

 

Ok, so still thinking about a second pond

apologies for the quick sketch (not on the back of an envelope, but close !)
The little circles above the pond and below the cherry are daffs, that we are hoping to naturalise, but they should also work around a new pond (hmmm, was I thinking ahead when I planted?!!)

Almost certainly nowhere near to scale, but you get the idea, and even an accurate plan wouldn’t convey the gradient...
The garden slopes top right to bottom left, as represented on the drawing. So the pebble “sloping area” needed to be built up. The top right of the pond is actually a sloping granite-cobble “wall”, trying to created a dried-up waterfall effect, up to the grass at the top of the pond.
I’m thinking of putting a true wildlife pond in above the “waterfall”, between the existing pond and the cherry tree. Some of the stones around the “waterfall” would be removed, and replaced with a stepping stone path to the bench. There is also an existing access route above the potential new pond...

So, my knowledgeable friends, my questions are:-
- How big does a wildlife pond need to be, to be stable/viable?
(I already have to top the pond up about 2-3” every week in the summer, as we have a lot of evaporation/animal activity/wind evaporation - so that would not be a problem)
- how deep does a wildlife pond need to be, to be stable/viable?
If the pond is only 4-6ft across, could I have it just 18-24” deep at the deepest? This would make it easier to shape, and I would not be looking to put the bigger plants in it, anyway...

 

Shhhhh but while ARMANDII is not looking, here's a tip for covering uneven sides on a pond built on a slope It wasn't possible to level the ground where we built our first pond. Too steep, too near the house and the septic tank! So I used old beams to build up a raised bed on the lower side, which helped to compensate a bit. On the really high side, though, there's a 2' drop from the top planting to the water level. Initially I relied on tall plants in the pond going upwards and cascading/creeping plants in the soil falling downwards to cover the exposed liner. Not a huge success. So I got some subtly-coloured fake turf and pegged it around the top so it drapes naturally to just below water level and hides/protects the liner. The frogs love it! Truly, they spend hours sunbathing on the 'grass' The sun has faded the initial colour, so there's nothing tacky or artificial-looking about it (take note, ARMANDII ). As for depth, as long as you can be certain that the water won't freeze solid in winter, any hibernating wildlife should survive OK. So anything over 6" should do there? Overheating in summer is more of a problem, so the deeper you make it, the better!

 

@noisette47
I’m not so worried about fitting the pond into a sloping site. After all, I’ve already done that for the main pond....
It’s more in regards to the minimum size and depth of a pond, if it hasn’t got fish to keep safe over winter. The amphibians don’t overwinter in the water anyway, so they are not an issue. But what about dragonfly larvae, etc? And the plants themselves...?
We do get quite cold temperatures here. We had below -10c in February, and most years I find myself melting a hole in the main pond, as it’s frozen over for more than 48 hours (so risk of toxins building up in the water). I suppose, in answer to my own question, with a week of nights of -10c, the water froze to a depth of 4-5”. But then it’s 3ft deep at its deepest...
(Writing that has made me realise I’ve gone all Imperial, rather than metric. What’s brought that on, after all these years?!!)