Create a small pond in my garden?

[Startingagainandagain]

My garden is finally taking shape (I moved into a new house 10 months ago) and I would love to add a small pond next.

The aim is to have a few water plants & hopefully benefit the wildlife (frogs, insects...).

Could anyone advise the best way to do a DIY, cost effective small pond if you have done a similar project and what I need to be mindful of?

That’s a very big subject! There’s been several pond threads recently - if you look at those, it may crystalise your ideas and give you some more specific questions

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/gardening/5016384-wildlife-pond

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/gardening/5074246-pond-ideas?page=3&reply=135294611

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/gardening/4912228-wildlife-pond?reply=129691367

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/gardening/5087518-new-pond-advice?reply=135707851

I just dug a hole with one shelf all the way round and bought a flexible liner ! Some stones , a few plants and it's looking really good. Even seen a frog ! I wish I'd dug it a bit bigger with the bottom and shelves wider as the soil is quite sandy and collapsed in a little bit. But definitely give it a go !

It took me an afternoon to dig a tiny foot-deep pond. It's all of a metre diameter, lined with old blankets and a upvc offcut from local pond place. I recycled tiny paving stones to put round the edge. Two years on it has three mini waterlilies, irises, water boatmen, pond snails and I get birds bathing and drinking, damselflies... I wired up the shed drainpipe to go into it so it tops itself up too. Love my pond.

We've used an old but sealed Belfast sink and built up around it with rocks and logs, steps and platform for the frogs/wildlife.
My OH ordered some mini pond plants and snails online, and we've kind just left it to do it's thing...
We didn't introduce and frog spawn but spotted our first one the other night, so the log steps worked 😁
We've used outside tap water left to stand or a day or two before filling or topping up...we have a fat pigeon who come for a wash and splashes water out!
A bag of shop bought water cress will clear any algae in a day or two.
Good luck, it's lots of fun and you don't need much space or even to dig.

We didn’t dig ours deep enough and it keeps drying out. If I do one again I’ll go a lot deeper. The hole looks bigger than it is in reality.

We made a "beach" (shallow bit with pebbles) area on one end of ours..in case hedgehogs fell in..also birds bathe there and bees etc drink. Love my pond

Thank you so much everyone for all the replies and also for taking the time to include links to previous threads!

I can't wait to start planning mine now :)

I dug one about one metre diametre and about 75cm deep. I'd have gone deeper but by then I'd hit hard rubble and it was becoming really backbreaking.

But I also sieved the dug out soil onto my lawn. It was hard work but it helped deepen the lawn, and redistributed the surplus soil in a way that was not noticeable and meant I didn't have to 'get rid' of it.

I used a flexible liner. I had previously dug a pong with a rigid liner but found it difficult to get exactly the right size and fit to support the line properly.

This sounds daft but the thing I should have been more mindful of was how tricky planting up behing the pond was going to be - because of where I located it. If you have open access all round that won't be an issue for you.

I also have a couple of beach areas but the thing the birds like the most is a piece of flat slate that sits on top of the side of an underwater plant pot. The top of it is just below the water level and they use it the most for bathing and drinking.

I have a mini pond in an old sheep trough... similar to a Belfast sink. I got pond gravel for the bottom, a big rock for one end, and a few pond plants. Seems to be doing ok, but last year (it's first year) I'm fairly sure the only thing living in it was biting insect larvae! This year my friend gave me some tadpoles which are growing nicely, and a snail, but that seems to have disappeared. I have rocks around the side, old branches etc plus some undergrowth so things can get in and out.

I removed a dead bush last year, so there is now a bit of a hole and my DH suggested digging a larger pond there... main problems are it would be quite sunny and it's currently overhung by large leylandii branches, but i want to cut the laylandii right back to our boundary (it's a beast and most definitely not ours) so perhaps that can be next year's job.