Life in Garden Ponds
How To
Building a Garden Pond
Before starting to dig out your pond, you need to consider where you are going to put all the earth and rubble. It is surprising how quickly the amount builds up, and unless you are prepared, you could suddenly find that you have run out of room. If you have suitably aged children, encourage them to have a go with the shovel whilst you go and have a cup of tea. The blackbird (who was always about when I was working in the garden) provides a useful idea of scale for the heap of earth, which at that time was nowhere near finished
In my case, I had sufficient room to store all the earth until after the pond was finished and I could then turn my attention to landscaping the rest of the garden using some of the earth. Even so, I ended up hiring a 6cu-yard skip which cost about £120 because of the government imposed Landfill Charges. If you do hire a large skip, try and get one that has an opening end door, as these are much easier to load using a builders wheelbarrow. In these two photographs, the overall site has been marked out using orange rope and the digging commenced. It was amazing how much builders rubble lay buried by the original house builder - I even unearthed old scaffold poles and fittings.
Do check out where any underground services go before starting to dig, and, if necessary, consult the relevant service providers for advice. The location of manhole covers can often give clues as to the likely direction any sewer pipes go. In the photograph below, you can see the height of our sewer manhole; fortunately it ran the other way or it could have easily scuppered our plans to have a garden pond right in front of our patio window. It did however, severely limit the space we had available to house the pond pump and u.v.c.