"If you can't go up, then go down" - the no dig pond.

I always wanted a pond on my allotment garden. Trouble is I have a huge tree that takes up a lot of my space and the tree roots make it very difficult to dig a deep enough hole. So instead of going down I went up.

This pond took me almost three years to do. Finding enough soil to use to make a bank and enough bricks to make the wall took me ages. I finally managed to finish it with a lot of help from my friend Shanti in October 2013. Just in time to plant the bank with some spring bulbs.
The amazing winter rains have filled it, so all thats left to do is find some toad spawn this spring and cross my fingers...

my lovely finished pond

In the beginning

It all started with somewhere to put the sticks and wood, you know, all those branches that are too thick to put in the compost and too much bother to cut with a saw. I stacked them under my big tree on a slight bank, where it was too dark and dry to grow any food.

Feed the birds

As the pile grew I noticed that it became a haven for small birds, especially wrens, robins and sparrows. They feed off the small insects that live in the rotting wood. 

I deliberately collected wood for the hedge and over the last few years I've created a very substantial stick hedge. It's a natural bird feeder and windbreak for the cold east wind. It also blocks the view of some ugly buildings. 

You can see the hedge in the background of the following picture. 

I've pushed some very large branches through the hedge and its stable - still standing firm after all the wild windy weather this winter. 

Finished! I had just enough bricks.

Toad envy

I've always wanted a pond somewhere in the garden. For the toads. Toads are the best slug replant there is, they can eat their own weight in slugs every day in the summer months. Even though I'm an organic gardener I've only ever seen one in my garden. 

I'm not killing them with sprays or pellets but its difficult to keep them as they won't stay in a garden unless there is a year around water source.  

The pond problem

Putting the pond under the big tree is the best place for me. Its such a large piece of unusable ground. The tree takes all the moisture from the soil in the summer and nothing much grows other than woodland flowers. But there was no digging down. My god - the tree roots! And the last thing I wanted was to stress my lovely old tree by sawing through roots. 

A problem shared

A friend suggested that I build up instead of down and I started collecting soil and bricks to make the bank in front of the stick pile wider. I built the wall and the bank bit by bit over three years! Finding free wheelbarrow loads of soil was not so easy.

As I built I tilted the bricks backwards into the bank and stepped them into the bank as the wall got higher. This is an old way of facing a bank and means that the bricks needed no mortar to keep them in place.

The pond is ridged. Formed of a big plastic pot from a tree which made it much easier to build around.
Its lined with builders damp proofing plastic sheet. 

the brick spacing is not perfect,
 but then very few of them are the same size and I'm not a bricky!

The final touches

The top layers of bricks gave me a bit of a headache. How to stop them slipping into the pond? Backwards tilting bricks into the soil at the back of the pond worked very well, but wedging the front ones together is a bit flimsy. We'll see how that holds up over time.. 

Later in the year when I have some money I will plant the pond with water iris, rushes and grass. :-)

The top bricks
 all I need now is some plants to soften the edges

I'll plant house leeks and
some other wall lovers  in between the bricks