As I mentioned in my previous post, our pond is rather on the teeny-tiny side but it even so it has proved to be a roaring success with the local wildlife.
I thought I'd start by re-showing photos of the garden taken when we first moved into St Abbs. We brought the arbour seat and garden bench with us; both spent many months laying on the grass before finding their final positions in the garden!
The whole place was a tangled mess, with three very large trees. The two sycamores had to come down; one was in danger of causing damage to our downstairs bathroom, and the one in the picture above was causing the garden wall to start bowing. Although it's not that easy to see in the photo, this piece of ground was actually pretty steep and not at all pleasant to work on.
It's a shame that the sycamores had to come down but they were causing too much structural damage. I don't think that they are a suitable variety for most gardens, to be honest, as they just grow way too large. As far as I'm aware, they are not trees that are actually native to Orkney, but they seem to grow extremely well up here!
We got Chris to put in a sleeper wall for us so we could eliminate at least part of the slope. Adrian then added log-roll cladding and a top edge strip. I think it looks very smart with it's black woodstain finish.
The tree trunks were very hefty, especially the huge piece at the back there! We decided that they would make a really nice organic edging around the pond area. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take photos of the pond-digging process but trust me when I tell you that it wasn't as easy as we hoped it was going to be LOL We had lots of roots from the old sycamore to contend with, plus a strip of concrete that runs down the whole length of the garden. We're not sure why the concrete is there but suspect that somewhere beneath it could well be the sewer pipe from the kitchen. We ended up digging the pond more to the right of the blanket. Thankfully, we used a pre-formed liner which was only about 135cm long x 92cm wide, and 52cm deep.
The width and length weren't so much of a problem, with the garden having such a slope it was the flippin' depth. We decided to raise the level of all the soil behind the log retaining wall so we didn't have to dig so far into the ground ~ after all, we're really not as young and fit as we once were! If you look at the area behind the watermark in the photo above, you might be able to make out that the liner is only partly buried in the ground.
As I said in my previous post, we didn't manage to get the pond level and you can really see that in the photo above. But to quote the great Bob Ross "there are no mistakes, just happy accidents" ~ and I now have a mini boggy area LOL And yes, I do believe that gardening is a form of art 😊
I'm afraid that it stayed in this unfinished condition for a good few months!
Then soon after we discovered the frogspawn in the pond, Adrian came across an article in the RSPB magazine about how to make a frog/toad abode. So naturally we decided that our garden and pond needed one too 😉 In our enthusiasm to build it we completely forgot to take construction photos, but we followed more or less the same process as in the article.
Building the frog house helped me to decide on what to do with the area between the pond and the wall. I had to dig out a lot of weeds and excess bulbs, although I did leave some clumps of the latter in strategic places. Don't get me wrong, I do love spring bulbs, but the garden was getting overrun with them so a thinning-out was definitely in order!
and built a retaining wall with more of those hefty logs.
The plants around the massive log to the right of the photo above were planted soon after the pond was put in. I filled in the new "terraces" by robbing-peter-to-pay-paul ~ i.e. I dug up plants from other parts of the garden to fill the space LOL
These two alchemilla mollis were in a bed in the back garden. I confess that I love way too many plants to have one single favourite, but Lady's Mantle is most definitely one of my many favourites.
To make life easier we put in a bark chippings path behind the pond, running the length of the sleeper wall. We put down a weed membrane and used recyled tyre edging (which we already had) to separate the path from the bed around the pond. I decided to put the mermaid bird bath (which was already here when we bought the house) at the end of the path as a focal point, as it had a bit of a "road-to-nowhere" look about it! I got Adrian to attach her to a chunky lump of tree trunk last year. I like the fact that she now stands a little higher ~ plus it keeps her anchored when we have high winds up here!
Once the path and edging were in place, I was able to raise the level of the soil around the rest of the pond. As before, I put in plants that I already had from elsewhere in the garden.
I even experimented by digging out some lawn daisies.....
I'm so happy with how well all the plants have settled in after being moved.
And it just goes to show that good things really can come in small packages 😊
I thought I'd start by re-showing photos of the garden taken when we first moved into St Abbs. We brought the arbour seat and garden bench with us; both spent many months laying on the grass before finding their final positions in the garden!
The whole place was a tangled mess, with three very large trees. The two sycamores had to come down; one was in danger of causing damage to our downstairs bathroom, and the one in the picture above was causing the garden wall to start bowing. Although it's not that easy to see in the photo, this piece of ground was actually pretty steep and not at all pleasant to work on.
It's a shame that the sycamores had to come down but they were causing too much structural damage. I don't think that they are a suitable variety for most gardens, to be honest, as they just grow way too large. As far as I'm aware, they are not trees that are actually native to Orkney, but they seem to grow extremely well up here!
We got Chris to put in a sleeper wall for us so we could eliminate at least part of the slope. Adrian then added log-roll cladding and a top edge strip. I think it looks very smart with it's black woodstain finish.
The tree trunks were very hefty, especially the huge piece at the back there! We decided that they would make a really nice organic edging around the pond area. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take photos of the pond-digging process but trust me when I tell you that it wasn't as easy as we hoped it was going to be LOL We had lots of roots from the old sycamore to contend with, plus a strip of concrete that runs down the whole length of the garden. We're not sure why the concrete is there but suspect that somewhere beneath it could well be the sewer pipe from the kitchen. We ended up digging the pond more to the right of the blanket. Thankfully, we used a pre-formed liner which was only about 135cm long x 92cm wide, and 52cm deep.
The width and length weren't so much of a problem, with the garden having such a slope it was the flippin' depth. We decided to raise the level of all the soil behind the log retaining wall so we didn't have to dig so far into the ground ~ after all, we're really not as young and fit as we once were! If you look at the area behind the watermark in the photo above, you might be able to make out that the liner is only partly buried in the ground.
As I said in my previous post, we didn't manage to get the pond level and you can really see that in the photo above. But to quote the great Bob Ross "there are no mistakes, just happy accidents" ~ and I now have a mini boggy area LOL And yes, I do believe that gardening is a form of art 😊
I'm afraid that it stayed in this unfinished condition for a good few months!
Then soon after we discovered the frogspawn in the pond, Adrian came across an article in the RSPB magazine about how to make a frog/toad abode. So naturally we decided that our garden and pond needed one too 😉 In our enthusiasm to build it we completely forgot to take construction photos, but we followed more or less the same process as in the article.
Building the frog house helped me to decide on what to do with the area between the pond and the wall. I had to dig out a lot of weeds and excess bulbs, although I did leave some clumps of the latter in strategic places. Don't get me wrong, I do love spring bulbs, but the garden was getting overrun with them so a thinning-out was definitely in order!
Once again, I had that slope to contend with *sigh* So I did a little bit of terracing.....
and built a retaining wall with more of those hefty logs.
The plants around the massive log to the right of the photo above were planted soon after the pond was put in. I filled in the new "terraces" by robbing-peter-to-pay-paul ~ i.e. I dug up plants from other parts of the garden to fill the space LOL
These two alchemilla mollis were in a bed in the back garden. I confess that I love way too many plants to have one single favourite, but Lady's Mantle is most definitely one of my many favourites.
To make life easier we put in a bark chippings path behind the pond, running the length of the sleeper wall. We put down a weed membrane and used recyled tyre edging (which we already had) to separate the path from the bed around the pond. I decided to put the mermaid bird bath (which was already here when we bought the house) at the end of the path as a focal point, as it had a bit of a "road-to-nowhere" look about it! I got Adrian to attach her to a chunky lump of tree trunk last year. I like the fact that she now stands a little higher ~ plus it keeps her anchored when we have high winds up here!
Once the path and edging were in place, I was able to raise the level of the soil around the rest of the pond. As before, I put in plants that I already had from elsewhere in the garden.
I even experimented by digging out some lawn daisies.....
and buttercups 😊 The daisies were fine from the start, but the buttercups took a while to settle in. I did think at one point that they wouldn't make it, so I was very pleased when they finally did perk up.
Like the garden around the pond, the terraced area has really filled out over these past few months. The Ragged Robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi), in the bottom right of the photo, has put on a gorgeous display ~ it plainly likes the boggy soil it lives in.
I'm so happy with how well all the plants have settled in after being moved.
And it just goes to show that good things really can come in small packages 😊
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