Having decided to reinstate our garden pond after twenty years, I dug out and shaped the hole, built a mole-size mountain range and then headed to the garden centre to get some Butyl* sheeting and some sharp sand.
The sharp sand was to bed the base of the pond and hopefully reduce the risk of stones piercing the liner. The liner…calculation suggested that I needed about five square metres. Garden centre had a 6m roll, so 5x6m it would have to be and I could trim off the excess. Turned out that even with squashing the sheet down into the hole I pretty much had the same area spare. So, that’s left over. Don’t rely on an online garden centre’s calculator to work out how much you need! Lesson learned…too late.
Any, two bags of sand was just about enough, I’d recommend adding 50% to your estimate for how much you think you’d need. The mole mountain range is now backed by some breeze blocks and bricks and infilled with the gravel. I plan to get some more attractive flat stones to create a dry stone wall on this and the other bricks around the edge.
The sheeting will be cut to a better shape once the pond has water in it…next few days. And, then the edge of the lawn will be trimmed to this shame and the excess sheeting covered with some of the pea shingle that had originally covered our garden when we moved in and was used to backfill the old pond.
Aquatic soil and some aquatic plants to stock the pond as well as the aforementioned drystone wall materials will be purchased soon. Watch this space for further updates.
Butyl, or more formally butyl rubber is a synthetic rubber, a copolymer of isobutylene with isoprene, commonly used for inflatable dinghies and the like as well as pond liners.