Andrew’s Pond Revisited – Chrystal Palace, June 2026
Written by: Andrew B
Work on the new pond at Andrew’s place in London started when he cut back all the bramble with a snazzy new electric strimmer. He then had a digger dig a hole – backbreaking work when we dug the first pond by hand ten years ago. The digger left spoil dotted around the site for later.
Paul arrived two days early and, while Andrew prepared his flat for the invasion, Paul (with occasional help from a frazzled Andrew) cleared the invasive bogbean from the original pond. This left enough water in the old pond to support the few frogs and newts still clearly resident. Paul (and earlier, Andrew) then used some spoil to build shallow shelves around the new pond, to support pond marginal plants.
When the crew arrived on Friday for the main residential, we laid first an underlay, then the main liner into the pond depression – flattened to its base by the lightest of our crew, Elaine – before Paul trimmed the liner edge. Francis, meanwhile, used a pole saw to cut overhanging sycamore and scots pine back – all cuttings later dragged by Elaine, Lynn and Andrew to top the pair of habitat piles.
With this done, we filled the pond from a hose, then used the remaining spoil to bank over the edge of the liner. Mick took on the job of shovelling the main spoil heap into barrows – shifting all of it himself – so that Elaine and Andrew could move it to the pond edge to help with burying the liner top.
Though we laid a second sheet of underlay over the top of the main liner, Andrew – taking Francis’s advice on board – later cut this overlay back so its top edge dropped into the water. Francis was right that this overlaid underlay was speeding the wicking away of the pond water.
Andrew added his few new-bought plants to the two ponds, plus a single piece of lesser spearwort back into the old pond. This was the sole survivor from Rick’s provision of pond weeds for the original pond to survive the overgrowth of bogbean. Andrew had tried more than once to clear the bogbean out, but its speed of growth had defeated him.
Fuelling all this work was Trish, our talented resident chef, ably assisted by Lynn. We spent three good evenings around the table eating the delicious grub then jawing away while the sun went down.
Wildflower seeds will be added to the de-brambled pond site as the seasons permit, and hopefully next year, the site will be a riot of colour, happy amphibians, and nectar-hungry butterflies and bees.
Hopefully some photos will follow soon