The Ponds!

When the cottage was used as a nursery it specialised in Japenese plants, particularly bonsai trees, and also had a substantial koi carp breeding programme going on. To keep the koi there were four rather large ponds that Jess and I intend to drain as ponds not conducive to dogs and we have no intention maintain ponds in the future. The biggest pond (pictured) is about 10ft wide by 15ft long and 3-4ft deep. Two of the others are about 8ft wide by 10ft long and almost 6ft deep and the fourth pond is basically a series of 3 interconnected pools about 4-6ft in diameter.

We didn't really know where to start (again) but fortunately one of our new neighbours came over to see us on our first day as home/wreck owners and offered the use of his pump, which was great as we thought we would need to buy one. The pump managed to drain the water within each pond in a matter of hours while in the meantime we could start lifting paving slabs surrounding the ponds and continue to dig out some more filtration tanks. We also had to rescue no end of frogs, small fish and also two large koi and a ghost carp that had been fending for themselves for the last couple of years. We transferred all the fish from one pond to another and manged to sell the koi to our arborist. Once we started to drain the last pond we collected all the fish and put them in the village pond. Unfortunately I was caught doing this by the recently retired parish counciller but he saw the funny side and hoped the local herons would be pleased.

Once the ponds were empty we had the linings to contend with. These were cemented in and extremely heavy, not least because of the amount of gunk and gravel collecting in the bottom. We thought that the linings might come in useful to go underneath a new driveway, patio or path so we were keen to keep them in good order. In all it took us a couple of weekends to clear the ponds and now we have these great holes in the ground we can fill them with the concrete paths from around the garden and save ourselves the cost of 4 or 5 skips.