Wildlife Pond, Rockery and Marginal Area

Woot! I've just got back from visiting the house and while there I was finally able to build the wildlife pond I've been dreaming about for the past few months. It took 3 days to build in total but really should have only been 2 as I had to go to 6 different garden centres before I found one that actually sold pond plants and marginals. (Gardening- apparently not as big in the north as it is in the south...)

Anyhoo, I am rather proud of this! The water level needs to be topped up a few inches and over the year things will grow in a bit to hide the bits of liner that are still visible. I made one or two mistakes during construction but realistically only I can tell they are mistakes, to 99% of other people they look like design choices, lol.

So there is the main pond in the middle which has a deep section in the centre and a shallow shelf around the edge for marginal plants and to allow critters to climb out if they accidentally fall in. In the pond I have the following-
Mare's Tail
Elodea
Water mint x2
Valerian
Water Dropwort
Common Bulrush
Lesser Spearwort
Soft Rush
Pendulous Sedge
Water spearmint
Scarlet Lobelia

Behind the pond I have built a raised bank using turf that had been removed from the lawn for a grow bed. I've embedded some twisted tree roots and large chunks of rubble (dug up from the garden) in the bank to a) look awesome, and b) provide homes for all sorts of creepy crawlies. I planted a Japanese shield fern, a cyclamen and some mosses I found growing in the lawn.

Then in front of the pond I built a rockery area using only rubble that had been dug up from the garden. Yep, it was a job and a half removing all that stuff from our desired grow bed locations. But on the upside yay for recycling and not needing to buy expensive rocks for the project. Then I planted up some arabis, mossy saxifrage, dianthus and a houseleek and several of it's offspring. (The houseleek is one of my favourite plants and I can't believe I haven't had one up until now!) The rockery is a little loose at the moment as I am not an expert in any dry stone walling type skills but I have in-filled all the gaps with compost as much as possible and once the plants start to spread (I'm looking at you mossy saxifrage!) they will hold the structure and give it that little bit of extra support it needs. I mean it's not totally unstable, it has stood up to bad weather and the frolicking of the neighbours cats but if the neighbours dog comes rampaging through it might take some damage. 

And finally there is the marginal/boggy area of the pond inbetween the two rocky structures. This is a very damp muddy area on the left hand side gradually turning into a very mini-pond on the right. Here I have planted-
Iris
Variagated "Chameleon" fishwort
Pendulous Sedge
Pink River Lily
Ragged Robin

Unlike the pond plants which were left in their containers to stop them taking over I put all of the marginal area plants directly into the soil so that they could spread out and provide lots of coverage for all manner of insects and amphibians. 


CAUTION: I didn't realise until after construction was finished that Water Dropwort is another name for Hemlock. This plant is very poisonous and looks superficially like Valerian, which is used by some as a herbal tea to aid sleep. When using plants from your own garden for cooking ingredients or herbal remedies please always make sure that you can identify a plant as 100% safe to use.
 Accidental poison death is neither big nor clever.  


This photo belongs to me. Please do not steal.