Landscaping

With a virgin piece of ground in which to dig a giant pond and being able to be there on site right from the start, I knew we could get it right. But life, the world, Sod's law and everything just dont let thingsThe site was levelled before the pond excavation proper started. happen too smoothly.

Buccament Bay was in trouble. The guys on the ground in St Vincent in the Caribbean had started digging the first pond and because no one on site had ever dug a pond either large or small, there was a definite lack of confidenceThe hole was too big, too deep and not level.: The first job was to get the lads pumping out the water,but that was to prove to be the water table that had been breached. So another plan had to be devised. in the the direction in which they were going. In fact they were pretty sure that they were making a bit of a 'cock up' and when it is a 330,000 gallon pond you are digging a 'bit of a cock up' can easily turn into a 'God Almighty cock up!'

Despite sending innumerable plans and diagrams of techniques, and despite spending nearly £40 on telephone calls from my end, things still sounded as though they were drifting beyond a state of no return. There seemed nothing for it but to fly out to the rescue - Superpondman! As it was any way, they would soon get to a stage where a lot of decisions had to be made on site as the project progresssed into more complex stages, so it was a case of going out sooner rather than later.

Calling all landscapers that tackle big ponds and complex koi ponds: if you are unsure that you are lining the pond in the right way and using the right techniques, you need some training, there is noThe course covers all you need to know from the vary basics of liner splicing to the sealing of quite complex details doubt about it. The best place to get that training is on the Firestone training course. It is such good value for money that you will wonder how they can ‘wine and dine’ you, put you up at a very comfortable hotel for the night, teach you for a full day how to install and splice up pond liner, whilst providing as much food and drink as you can consume during the day, all at such a rock bottom price of just over £200. Even if you forget all that, you come away with a certificate, all the tools you need for joining liners, instruction manual and even the ‘T’ shirt! Just the cost of materials you use up in the course of the ‘hands on’ practice must amount to more than the cost of the course.

Using plants in this way is easier, more economical and more aesthetically pleasing than many of the heavy engineering solutions. By this method several typical lakeland and waterways problems can be solved in one go, and it is something that could easily be taken up by the pondkeeper and wild fowl conservationist too.

Article and photos by Tom Roach 

With the environment moving steadily up the political agenda, business is now trying to find new ‘soft’ engineering solutions as opposed to more traditional ‘hard’ revetment techniques. The recent summer rainfall has sparked debate, not only how to protect areas from flooding but the associated risks that flooding brings. Erosion of rivers and lakes is a natural process and ‘hard’ engineering techniques that have been employed in the past are increasingly being seen as inappropriate and unsustainable. This has led to forward thinkers finding innovative natural ways to curb the onset of erosion using techniques that would occur in nature.

WATER PLANTS AND PLANTING THE TYPES and THE CHOICE

NEW POND, NEW WORLD

The moment your new water garden begins to fill with water is the creation of a new environment in the garden. Here is a place for new possibilities but if left to its own devices would very quickly turn into a noxious lagoon of pea green slime. I am not knocking algae, even though algae in the form of microscopic single celled plants are what cause the green hue and goo, they are also responsible as a whole for the production of most of the oxygen on this planet. Algae have their place in the cycle of life in every pond, but they do need to be restricted. Like any bare piece of ground in a garden, if the gardener does not put in his own plants then nature takes over with what we usually regard as weeds. Algae are effectively the 'weeds' of water and can only be restricted with competition and suppressed by encouraging the growth of other plants in the environment. These higher plants have other functions too and they all work together to ensure a healthy environment in which all the animals and plants themselves can flourish.

The Buccament Bay project is well underway.: The landscaping is all that is required for the front of the holiday site. Some of the cabanas could be used already.I had a phone call from Ken Picknell, the project manager for Ridgeview Construction, who was on St Vincent in the Caribbean. He was part way through a large project sponsored by an English company called Harlequin Property. The project was to build, what on the face of it, seemed like a very ‘upmarket’ holiday camp in a bay called Buccament Bay, not far away from the bay in which a lot of the filming of “Pirates of the Caribbean” took place. Fans of the films would recognise a lot of the landscape and seascapes.

But why did they want me? Well, part of the original conception was to lend the site an ‘old worldy’ feel by building the holiday chalets, or ‘cabanas’ as they called them, in an old plantation style, then to add to that a lush growth of plants and lots of water in the form of ponds. As I was to find out, these large ponds would be well planted and full of fish and would have the dual purpose as acting like catchments and large open drains for the short but incredibly heavy downpours of rain that happen on an almost daily basis on the island. Each pond would be linked to another and an outfall would eventually take any excess water to the river that ran down the side of the site and out to sea. The whole ambience would be of luxury habitation in amongst a natural and wild environment. There was never a project more tailored for my skills, but what was the problem?

Putting in a preformed liner often seems the easy option when contemplating building a water garden, but things dont are not that simple when it actually comes down to it, especially if the pool liner is a big one. Getting it precisely level can be almost a lottery and then trying to make it look natural and in keeping with the rest of the garden can then seem a hopeless task. Here we show how you can get a level and attractive feature that would be on a par with a pond created in any other way.

It has to be admitted that even a skillfull professionally installed water feature using fibreglass products is probably more suited to the urban or suburban garden, but there are distinct advantages when it comes to maintenance and keeping it clean. Fibreglass as opposed to a plastic ponds can be manufactured much larger and deeper and are therefore slightly more suitable for providing a home larger species of fish like koi, as long as the numbers are kept to a very few.

CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES FOR EDGING THE POOL - A quick-fire guide

Materials – Capping or coping stones, sand, cement, waterproofing powder or liquid, silglaze. If a good firm bonding is essential then use SBR Bonding solution. This will allow you to dispense with the waterproofer, but is quite expensive.
Tools. Shovel, round ended trowel, level, lump hammer and stiff brush.