Siting a pond on a sloping garden

Given the drought situation we are experiencing, and you probably are in Belgium too, I think you may need to lower them more than you would really like to. Assuming you are not topping up the water levels with a hosepipe.

As you know, I have a new wildlife pond too. I was given three waterlilies by friends. One is N alba, the wild one and it is doing fantastically well with flowers every day. The other two were much smaller when given to me and are varieties that don't get very big; neither has flowered. I'm hoping next year. As the water level drops I have pushed the baskets into deeper water.

As an aside; our water levels have dropped a lot and policy is not to top up from the hosepipe. We have a rain recapture system in place but there is no rain water!! Drastic work called for....watch my thread. Things will happen soon, unanticipated things that is. It's all a work in progress.

 

We have resorted to topping up with the hosepipe, as havent got a ban. I think the lower shelves would be dry by now, otherwise! I will be keeping a lookout for an update!!

 

Not quite 12 weeks, but seeing as I'm heading back to the UK for a few weeks this coming weekend, I thought I'd post an update...
(And I'll be able to at least look at photos of my pond, and garden, whilst I'm away...)

An Ariel view - at least, from our bedroom window...

Some "temporary" old garden chairs - they are being used more now than they have been for years!

From the "waterfall" end.
The plants have been juggled around a little to fit in a bog-bean, a pickerel plant, another (larger-leafed) purple loostrife, some more forget-me-not roots, and a couple of as-yet unidentified plants...


(The dog is still fascinated - but then, so am I!!)

 

We planted all of those as well; all good for wildlife apparently. All but the bogbean have started to flower.

Your lawn is looking as brown as ours.

 

Brown grass - the must-have for 2018!!

 

Tomorrow I have to go to the UK, to take my mother-in-law home, and look after my mother for a couple of weeks.

I'm taking my dog with me , but of course leaving the pond behind...

Who is going to watch the fish chase each other round the waterlilly, or cheer when the backswimmer makes an appearance, or smile at the antics of the wasps and bees as they come in for a drink? Or lie in bed at night, listening out for the mating calls of the midwife toads?
I will be back soon, my lovelies, I'll be back soon....

 

Sad person that I am - looking at this post to try to get a pond fix, whilst looking after Mum in the U.K.

 

If, like us, Belgium has had a torrential downpour, the pond will be fine.

 

The nights are getting longer, and the stressed trees are loaded with berries already. Autumn is approaching a-pace.

Time to start thinking about linking the pond with the bed above it. We want to have a pathway through the bed extension, to get all-round access to the pond, and to lead through a bench we hope to source (to go where the two chairs currently are).
On a walk through the forest a few days ago, I noticed that someone has fly-tipped a load of roofing-slate....
Would a broken-slate path work? It would be set into the slope, to stop pieces slipping into the pond. I thought the colour would link in with the dark water-surface. My main concerns are:
- durability
- how it works underfoot, especially if walked on barefoot
- how the plants would work around it
- the ease of breaking up thin tiles, to create appropriate pieces, without sharp edges if possible

 

really pleased to say that we have toad spawn in the pond!

 

And some frogspawn appeared over Saturday night!!!

 

Today we had more frogspawn on top of/in the middle of the developing spawn....

 

Quite late for frogspawn but glad you’ve got some.

 

That's now two lots in a couple of weeks....
I think we are being affected by engineering works they are doing on the stream. Half of our street, on the edge of farmland, is not connected to mains sewage. So we have septic tanks - no problem...
... but the government have decided that we all have to connect up. Lots of problems for many, some flats have been exempted (so what's the point?!), our house will have to have two pumps to get our ‘contributions’ up the slope to the street.... and they will run the sewage pipes alongside the local stream, which is a Nature Area, because of the Midwife Toads (no one talks about the great crested newts....).
All the stream works were supposed to be finished over the winter, but they are still going on, so I reckon there are a lot of mis-placed amphibians in the area, looking for a place to breed....