Water Garden Project

This is an old post that I haven't gotten round to posting before now as I was waiting for summer to show the project at its best!

Our garden had a pond, which remains full in the wetter months, but dried out about 50% of the time so we got a local guy, Michal, who knows what he's doing with water features to make us a stream running down to the pond, make the pond bigger and add a pump to pump the water back up to the top. He's also put in a pond liner to stop the water from seeping away through the bottom. Before putting the liner in he had to fish out about 40 newts, which were then rehomed in the pond afterwards and seem happy. It has matured over the last few months and I've taken away all the gravel at the top of the stream and seeded it with grass to complete and soften the area!

The pumped stream now flows down what was a gravelly, overgrown rock garden. Sourcing rocks for this new feature is pretty easy up here - there's rock everywhere - you don't go to the garden centre! Many of the plants we either left in situ or moved around - we hope we've managed to keep plants that will work together and no one species ends up dominating. Bamboo remains a challenge - the clump we have by the pond is quite aggressive and will need some taming.

The frogs have returned this year and the tadpoles are thriving in a roomy new pond that holds its water so that plenty of little froglets will become next year's nomads who return to Clacheranmor to breed.

See below for a little video of the lovely frogs and their new home.