Water Garden Plans

Photo by Diego Madrigal from Pexels

We're away on holiday this week (although we've decided to leave early because we're missing home!) and I have been spending most of my time planning the garden and pricing things up.

There is a slight problem... things always seem more expensive than I had initially thought! But, looking on the bright side, finding cheaper alternatives can sometimes lead to an example that would work even better!

We have an area of the garden which we ear-marked as a water garden as soon as we saw it, and I have a plan to keep a fish pond there, as we have plans to create a wildlife pond elsewhere in the garden. My hope is to have a Japanese style water garden, with ornamental miniature trees, and plenty of cool grasses. But my hopes of a raised pond were proving to be a bit difficult.

I decided to look into getting a raised bed, which I could attach a pond liner to, but I don't know if it would be strong enough to hold water. And, besides, for a decent sized pond, the price was still high.

Today, we went for a fortuitous walk in Kirkmichael this afternoon, and parked in a well-kept car park. Around the sides of the car park were retaining walls with rocks put in metal cages. They must have been strong to withstand the pressure from the other side of them, and it seemed almost too good to be true.

An idea began to formulate in my mind.

What if the walls of the raised pond were stones in metal cages, rather than wood which I had initially considered. It would certainly fit with the dry stone wall on one boundary of the water garden. So, here's my plan...

Have 0.5m high cages, making a rectangle 1m x 2m. Fill the cages with Scottish coast cobbles from Gravel Master. Then attach an underlay for the pond liner (I'm concerned the pond liner might rip on the metal but if there are any rough bits I'll deal with them somehow!) then attach the pond liner.

We are likely to get freezing temperatures at Stempster which means two things:

1) We can't have koi fish. This is such a shame as it would fit perfectly with the theme, but I can't in all conscience keep them where they might get poorly. Goldfish are a much better choice for Caithness, and they can grow quite big if they have plenty of room.

2) While the rock walls will be 50cm high, I want to make the pond a little deeper by digging into the ground a bit. I'll have to be careful not to undermine the rock walls though! This will give the fish somewhere to go in freezing temperatures.

So, there's my plan for the raised pond. At some point, I'd like to put pen to paper and draw a detailed plan of what I'd like where but there are some things that are better not mentioning to my family until I've done them and they've worked!


I'll write a blog post when I have completed the pond but I have to save up for the stuff first as I'm budgeting £500 for it... which is still cheaper than a good quality wooden raised pond!

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