Pond Lining

Today's been spent lining the pond. We started by tidying up the digging: forming a solid and flat base around the edges where a retaining wall is needed, laying cement blocks and bricks to reinforce this, and smoothing and picking over the surface to remove stones and refine the shape.

Once we were happy with this, we used the waste carpet we picked up yesterday to cover as much of the surface as we could. The carpet should prevent any sharp stones or glass that we missed from reaching the rubber liner. On top of this, we laid a complete layer of 200gsm non-woven liner, which has the same purpose, and then, finally, spread out the EDPM liner (8 x 6m).

We then built the retaining wall, which goes around about half of the circumference, where the ground level is considerably different to the water level. This went rather faster than I feared, and we were finished by about 1900. We've left a hosepipe running, sprinkling water into the pond...it's filling very, very slowly.

While this gradually filled, we back-filled the space between the earth bank and the new wall with soil, and have put in the few pond-edge plants we have: a Rocket ligularia, a rodgersia, a houttenyia, two purple ligularia, and a few hostas. The hostas may need to be moved to a shadier position: we'll see.