Building a pond + other stuff!

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Yesterday I lost all my normal days gardening work. It rained from 6pm Wednesday evening to 11.45 pm Thursday night.

Luckily it’s been dry today so I managed to do half of the work I should have done yesterday today so I’m now knackered!

It is lovely to see the grass growing again. I put some weed and feed on one of my customers lawns last week and it’s gone mad!

On another subject . I’ve owned perhaps 15 cats over my life time ( once I had 6 at one time) and they’ve all known how to avoid getting wet in bad weather. Most would sit under my car but my latest cat Moz does not seem to see a link between rain and getting wet!

He often sits out in the middle of the lawn in a thunderstorm and cares not a jot!

Last winter he sat in the middle of my lawn in a snow storm for so long that the lawn was covered with half an inch of snow but when he got up it was green underneath where he’d been sitting!

Here’s Moz

I’ve even provided a shelter ( which later in the year I’ll fill with dry leaves to hopefully provide a hibernation place for a hedgehog) see below

but will he use it? No!

Here’s a link to a video of Moz when he sees snow probably for the first time

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31559373@N00/4314819850/in/set-72157621602639178/

Does anyone know what this is? It has appeared via (I asssume )bird droppings in a couple of my customers gardens. It grows to about 6 feet high.It has white flowers followed by little black fruits

I’ve just been told the above plant is American Pokeweed. (Phytolacca americana).

Anyway here’s another project I undertook for a customer….

I created this pond in March 2006 .The customer didn’t want to go to the expense of covering the liner edges with rocks so I planted it with spreading plants. Some of these have been very effective, some have not. A couple of years after this was taken and with a few extra ground spreading plants added the pond liner disappeared and it looked really natural.

The water features were the customers idea. He bought 3 different diameter circular slabs and had a hole drilled through the centre of each. Water is then pumped through a pipe which reaches to just below the top of the top slab. The slabs are supported on bricks under the water and there is a gap of about 1 inch between each slab. The water trickling over the slabs sounds beautiful and also aeriates the pond.The feature was incredibly cheap compared with shop bought features. ( Cost each excluding the pump was about £5!)

You could use this water feature without a pond. Dig a hole put something about the size of half a beer barrel into it to hold water, Cover with heavy duty galvanised netting and put the slabs of the feature on top. Then cover any netting still showing with pebbles. The water would then just drain through the pebbles into the barrel which would have a fully immersible pump inside to pump the water around.

This would be virtually maintenance free and I guess safe for young children.

• 27 Aug, 2010
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