UPDATE: Another iteration…I think the embankment will go in the morning and the doubled-up liner will be folded beneath the stones rather than cut…for now.
Like I said in the earlier blog about re-digging our old pond, I hadn’t really mapped out the site and how I was going to manage it. We have now decided to use the spare acreage of Butyl liner to double line it…and we are now filling with water. If someone tells me now that that’s not the right thing to do then I’ll just tip the gravel back in the hole and stick the old garden lamp we inherited from previous owners of Pelham Towers on the resulting mound. It’ll be that or the moth trap.
Anyway, while it’s filling, we’re “pondering” what plants to buy to stock it and what rocks to use to edge it. Mrs Sciencebase would like a nano-waterfall of some sort and maybe lights…by the way, the breezeblocks and bricks are history.
An interesting tip from a US site walking you through creating a wildlife pond suggests sampling a few pints of water from a local, established pond and adding that to your own pond water to kickstart an ecosystem. It sounds as pointless as those active, bio yoghurt drinks, to be honest. And, worse, you could introduce parasites and pathogens as well as weeds from another site int your own.
I reckon once you add plants to the pond and a few birds have released copious amounts of uric acid waste into it, it will establish its own system quite quickly. We’ve also got rainwater in butts that might suffice, it’s not stagnant but definitely has some eco going on, Mrs Sciencebase having had the same thought has just checked. So, I reckon a bucket from there would be useful. Indeed, some recommend not using tapwater, but really, it’s going to take quite some time if you let just rainwater fill a pond, and the only chemicals (other than water itself) in tapwater are chlorine products which, soon get used up and the byproducts evaporate.
Meanwhile, as it’s still filling and in between chilling showers, here’s a snapshot from under our Wisteria, seven years, I think since it first blossomed.
