Thwarted by a winged beauty

It took me a lot of time and effort to create my pond. The digging part wasn’t too hard. I am quite good at digging so long as it takes place slowly and involves a lot of leaning on the spade and talking to passing neighbours. Fortunately I have a front garden and a remarkable number of my neighbours were quick to figure out that a man holding a spade and standing in a hole wanted to be distracted.

It was when I thought that I had nearly finished that the hard part began. I had acquired a more than adequate supply of thick black plastic to ensure that I could line the pond safely, but once I let the water in it neatly pulled the plastic down into the depth of my pond, leaving a great expanse of plastic hanging outside the corner edges and a little rim in the middle of one side over which the water trickled out.

In digging my hole I had sensitively adapted the shape to be in sympathy with the natural lie of the land. The water just lay there stubbornly insisting on being horizontal and insensitively exposing the small rises and falls in the earth surrounding it. So the pond water neatly lapped over the edge of the pond at exactly the point where the plastic was the thinnest and left a great mass of ugly black plastic standing high and dry on the opposite bank and in the corners. Quite an achievement of engineering for a pond that was only six foot by four.

I proceeded to bale the water out so that I could raise and lower the bank appropriately. I finally managed to get the pond nicely level and hid the plastic under a pleasing rim of good Yorkshire stone that my neighbour had kindly donated from his rubble heap. I could start planting.

At this point I discovered a further truth about building a pond. When you’re happily digging away it seems like a good idea to make it nice and deep and there seems to be no special reason to level off the floor since it is going to be under three foot of water. As soon as I started to add the plants I saw the error of my ways. Over-priced garden centre water plants tend to like to lie flat. On their sides. Mine keeled over when I tried to place them neatly around the edge of the pond.

To fix it I had to remove the stones from the edge of the pond, bale most of the water out, rescue the plant, lift up the wet plastic, insert enough soil to build a shelf for my plants and ensure that it was well tamped down before I put everything back again.

I did, eventually, make it and was rather pleased with my efforts. It had lovely marsh marigolds round the edges, a magnificent water lily in the centre and perfectly level edges lined with local stone. All it needed was some fish.

I settled on some beautifully patterned Koi carp to wallow in the depths and a few golden orfe to race about on the surface. I placed the clear plastic bags in the water for the right amount of time for them to acclimatise and then released them into the safety of their new home.

It was at least two months before a neighbour kindly informed me that they’d seen a lovely heron in my garden. Apparently it was a magnificent sight. That long neck really can look remarkably graceful as it searches the depths of the domestic garden pond and finds every last one of the nice tasty fish. I haven’t bothered to restock the fish. It seems like a rather expensive way to feed wildlife. I’m leaving the water to passing frogs and newts and if the heron wants to eat those then it won’t be at my expense.

Andrew Brown’s comic novel ‘Rural Bliss’ is now available on Kindle or iPad, priced £2.10