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Gardening

Find tips and tricks to make your garden or allotment flourish on our Gardening forum.

Help! How do I make my filled in pond look pretty?

5 replies

millypip · 11/03/2011 11:38

When we moved into our house we filled in the pond as I was worried about our very small children falling in. The pond is one half of the patio which joins the back of our house.

The pond was concrete lined so we tried to break up the concrete to make some drainage and filled it with soil with the aim of making a flower bed. However, nothing at all grows in there and it just looks really tatty and yukky. The soil is too wet and seems to be filled with creepy crawlies that think there should still be a pond there.

In an ideal world we would have the whole patio redone including over the pone as it really needs it. However, we can't afford it at all, not for a few years at least. So please please please does anybody have any ideas what we can do? Are there any plants that might grow in bug filled wet soil in a slightly shady place? Or is there anything we could do to cover the area up that would like neat and tidy and not be too expensive. I'm getting desperate!

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millypip · 11/03/2011 11:43

Perhaps I should add that so far I have just tried planting herbs and lavender in the "bed of doom". I thought it would be lovely sitting at the table next to it with the lovely smells. Nothing really thrived though :-(

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Bobby99 · 11/03/2011 14:53

Why not go for a bog garden then? There are lpenty of plants that like damp soil. Hostas, rodgersias, candelabra primulas...

scurryfunge · 11/03/2011 15:00

We had a raised bit at the bottom of our garden that the previous owners had dumped their broken up patio into.

We raised it further with sleepers, covered it in a plastic sheeting to stop the weeds and then filled the area with slate chippings. We then put lots of pots, a bench, a fountain and decorative stuff on it.

Driftwood999 · 11/03/2011 15:14

How about a sand pit for the children, would that be fun and at a reasonable cost v.s use and pleasure? Even if only for a few years ifyswim.

millypip · 11/03/2011 17:29

Thank you all! I love the sand pit idea but as i made my husband buy one last year he may not be too keen on that. I think I'd like to find out more about "boggy" plants and try some of those. Any more suggestions are welcome and I'll get my books out too!

I really don't know much at all about plants yet so I have everything to learn. (I'm having 2 raised beds built next weekend which I'm very excited about - sooo many possibilities!) :-)

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