A Garden Update

There are so many aspects to gardening.  There is the winter dreaming and planning, early spring seed starting and finally the late spring hard work.  I've just come to the end of the hard work part for 2011.

But let me take you back to the beginning of one section of my garden in 2010.

Here are my step-by-step instructions to creating a pond garden.

Start by digging a hole large enough to bury a fair-sized body, while neighbours look serepticiously over the fence in growing alarm.  Retain the rocks you dug out of the hole for suitable, future artsy-fartsy placement.

Set the pond in the hole.  Come out the next day to find that rain water has flowed down between the pond and the earth and the pond is now floating.  Ponds aren't supposed to float.  This issue needs to be addressed.

Bail water out of the hole, re-set the pond, add border stones and revel in the fact that you are now two inches taller than when you first entered the garden, owing to the thick red muck sticking to the bottom of your shoes.

Fill the pond quickly so that the weight of the water will keep the pond in place.  Well at least in theory.

Add plants and place unearthed rocks decoratively around the pond.  Step back and admire your handiwork.

Summer 2010.  Click to see fish.

I don't plan things too carefully.  I get an idea and just start poking about.   If something doesn't work: I change it.   If I'm cutting a garden outline I don't lay down string or hose as an outline to follow.  I just start digging.

The pond garden started out as the oval area you see above.

This year I decided the garden area didn't proportionally fit with the pond size so I expanded the garden.

Early spring 2011.

After days of rock hauling, digging and stone setting, the expanded garden was ringed with a border of rocks.

Three weeks later I decided I didn't like the look and removed most of the rocks and  re-edged the garden and added more plants and a bird bath.

This is how my pond looks now.

Summer 2011.

I'm pretty pleased with the results.

I left some stones around one side of the pond.

I added some floating plants to give the goldfish extra shade and to give the teeny, tiny baby goldfish somewhere to hide from their predatory, unsentimental parents.

The finishing touch was installing a water pump that trickles water down through the rocks at one end of the pond.  I love that sound.