Pond renovation project – summary

Step one: clearing and sieving

The first donations have been received and we can start the project. Remove the coarsest leaves to see what everything looks like underneath. It’s good that a picture doesn’t convey the smell of the tilted pond. It’s bad, the smell is more like a sewer!

What’s under the leaves? Even more work. The pond is silted up to the top. Outside the pond, an impenetrable blackberry hedge that has wrapped its tendrils around and into the pond. A nice piece of work lies ahead!

We have a lot of work behind us. We had to thin out the hedge of the pond, cut down a few trees and dig up roots. We also had to push back the blackberry hedge that had taken over the entire pond.

We are really grateful for the donations for the pond renovation project. With this we can now finance the purchase of concrete and seal the holes again. Many many thanks. ?

Thanks also to Andreas, who spontaneously came along on one of the days and helped us clear the blackberry hedg

Do you have any idea? Feel free to leave us a comment. ?

Update: Step two – mudslinging. 

The second step was to get rid of the brackish water, for this I used my dirty water pump, which is normally used for my irrigation system.

The pond has been pumped empty and all the mud has been dug up. Of course Bernd was there and inspected what had happened to his farm. What looks like a short series of pictures was actually a lot of wheelbarrows full of dirt. Unfortunately, the dirty water pump could only pump the water out, so we had to dig by hand! 🙂

In summary, I can say that it was really annoying. A cuboid shaft appeared beneath all the mud. For a brief moment we hoped for a little treasure while digging. Bad luck, unfortunately we have to keep looking for money. 🙂

The next step is to start repairing the concrete layer of the pond. Soon more…

Step four: Concrete march

When the first donations arrived, we were able to get a few bags of trass cement from the hardware store. This has a higher structural density and is therefore waterproof. A few YouTube videos later, Anton sat on his knees for several days as the weather kept interrupting the work.

The concrete is in, now we have to keep our fingers crossed that we have patched all the holes. We have re-concreted the entire perimeter and the pond has a footbridge for the animals and a life raft for the insects. We found some buried red sandstones while digging and removing the blackberries. These have been converted into walking stones around the pond.

This step was extremely dirty, but you could now slowly see the result. Which always boosted motivation. Of course, Inspector Bernd has to check everything.

What looks like a short operation in the pictures was actually several days and an evening construction site. 🙂 We would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your first donations! Without the support of some people we would not have been able to renovate the pond.

Now it’s time to continue collecting donations, because we need a pump to ensure circulation, a timer and some plants for oxygen in the pond.

Update step five: water

The pond is now being filled. We got a few aquatic plants, whatever the budget allowed. We still need some support for the edge of the pond. Insect-friendly plants should be planted around the edge and some ground cover should help against the new blackberry shoots.

We still need a pond pump and the electrical system still needs to be installed. We would like to thank you very much for helping us to create this drinking place for the animals.We have already discovered some animal tracks and suspect that they belong to a deer.

Update Five: The Edge of the Pond

In the place where the blackberry hedge used to be, there will now be a scented jasmine hedge. Since we had to clear the edge area, we also want to give something back to the insects. We also got a butterfly lilac and some ground cover plants.

We worked hard on this project, I hope we were able to give the donors a good insight into where their money went. I will take a picture/video of the pond in the summer and we will see which plants have grown and which animals will hang around here.

Update Six: The Summer

Newts, frogs and water striders have settled here. Birds, foxes and deer come to these drinking troughs every day. I’ll put the wildlife camera on the pond.

We were only able to carry out this project with your help. Unfortunately, some of the aquatic plants didn’t make it and we’ll have to do some work here again in the spring. So if you would like to make a donation to the pond, I will leave the fundraising campaign open.

Thank you very much, we are really very happy that there are people who support us in our project.

Here’s a before and after picture.

What did you think of our work, do you have any suggestions? Please leave us a comment.