MAKING THE MEADOW & POND AREA. – John Stanton Photography

This area will eventually be full of flowers and plants to attract wildlife but at the moment has a few chestnut and loads of silver birch saplings as well as the stumps of several larch which toppled over in previous storms.
The plan is to thin out and replant with a variety of native trees and shrubs.
As you can see I have felled a few chestnut already and stacked in piles.
The piles have several gaps in to allow for birds to nest in the spring and insects to overwinter.

When I starting clearing this area it was meant just to let some light in but I notice a small impression in the ground , which in turn gave me the idea to dig a pond.

This is the area – not much to look at , but now i have raked off the leaves and small branches.
I don’t have a plan as such ,just start digging and see how it forms.

Taking shape

This is day two of digging and I expect will take me around a week to complete.
I normally dig until my back hurts then call it a day and have a hot bath before I start my own work.

It is now taking shape and this is how I have left it after 2 days of hard digging its now Friday the 4th December 2015,
You might be able to see the pegs I have put in, this is so I don’t get carried away with the digging and keep me on track, the left hand side to just about level and I will now work my way out until I feel its big enough.
The liner will be about £40 to £50 and I will hopefully scrounge some old carpet to act as a underlay.
I think I will leave it for this week and start again after the weekend.
The idea is now to attract some Dragonflies so I can do some macro work later on.

I was going to have a break from digging but my Grandson wanted to come and see what i had been doing so we had and hours digging on Saturday morning.

Me & Leo our new Pomeranian puppy

Charlie my eldest grandson came to help

This is how I left it Monday afternoon on the 7th Dec after a mornings digging, almost there.You can see I have started to form the shelf which will hopefully allow me to plant something in not too deep water.

POND FINISHED

POND LINER FITTED AND WEIGHED DOWN

Finally finished the digging on Tuesday 8th and the Liner which I had ordered at 8×8 metres turned up Thursday afternoon so Friday morning so me fitting a make shift underlay out of some spare thick plastic I had saved for this purpose and installed the liner , again great fun in breezy conditions, like wrestling a sale but at least its in place now and just waiting for the rain to do its job.
Could take a while but at least its installed and once filled I can then start shaping the edges.
At the moment its left loose so the rain and gravity can do its thing and i can get on with other jobs.