Back in the day, we had an enormous garden pond. Dozens and dozens of frogs. Something of an accident waiting to happen with a baby and a toddler in the house. I drained it, relocated the frogspawn to friends and neighbours with ponds and donated the frogs. Fill it in with gravel and hardcore and turfed over it.
Regretted it ever since.
So, now that we have no toddlers in the house, I thought it was time to get back to aquatic nature. The original pond was kidney-shaped (classic), about 6m by 3m, you could always see where it had been as the grass was sunken and it was the patch that dried out the soonest whenever we had a prolonged dry spell. I didn’t even need to mark out the area to dig it was so obvious where that would be…although I have opted for something slightly smaller than the original an ovoid about 3×2.6m. It’s about 0.6m at its deepest with a built-up surround to one end and some “shelving”.
I started digging at 14h48 today and stopped at 16h14 (same day!). Now, I just need to buy a liner, some underlay and sand to make a firm base, get some aquatic soil to assist the plants, and, of course, some aquatic plants. I can then send out invitations to the local amphibia.
We have not decided whether to add a trickling water feature…it isn’t essential as the plants will do the requisite oxygenating of the water and will suffice unless we decide we want to keep fish…and that’s another decision that is being deferred.