Building the Pond

March 2004


The pond shape, using an old hose pipe.

The turf removed.

After digging a little deeper. The top soil was sieved and spread over the garden to level the site.


The bricks were there to stop me falling over the posts we used to mark out the level of the ground. We used a clear tube filled with water to get the level right all around the pond.

The finished pond is approx. 15ft x 8ft x 2 ft deep.


The pond lined with wet sand.
We put old carpet underlay beneath the underliner as added protection.
The liner in position. We overestimated the size needed, because we had intended to make the pond another 6 inches deep, but because the ground was so bad, we stopped digging at about 2ft.


Almost full, this took about 3 hours.
The butyl liner trimmed.
We used 4 sizes of pebbles for the beach, washing and sorting each size and removing any broken pebbles with sharp edges. As an added precaution, we used some spare underliner over the butyl before putting in the pebbles.
Our first plant.

Little did we know how much hard work this was going to be! Two months digging produced a variety of bricks, glass, pottery and old drains. Because the ground was so bad, we lined the pond with sand, then old carpet underlay and finally a good quality underliner before laying the butyl liner. We sieved the soil from the pond and used it to level the rest of the garden. We never want to see a sieve again!



Page updated:  Saturday, July 17, 2004