The lily pond was one of the earliest parts of the garden we restored, beginning in my second winter there, and typically, I can't find the photographs of the work in progress, however hard I try. What I can show you is the problem, and the resolution of that problem. It's just a pity that the interesting part of the story is in pictures that I have lost. Never mind.
Different species of waterlily grow at different depths, and it is a simple matter of sinking the planting boxes at the right depth and letting them get on with it. At least that is how it looks on day one. But as we have seen with everything else in the garden, the conditions that prevail on day one do not exist in perpetuity. Circumstances change. This happens in ponds as much as in borders. Over the years a badly- or un- maintained pond will begin to silt up as leaves and soil blow in. The bottom of the pond will rise up to meet the surface, the distance between the two will decrease, the lilies will get out of sorts. Or alternatively, as with ours, the lilies will become overgrown and woody and begin to float on the surface of the water, drifting about waywardly and rising out of the pond like Jesus gone walkabout. That was what confronted me on arrival.
Now, I am no water gardener. I'd never dealt with a pond before coming to this place. I was clueless. Listening to the oracle, the combined historic expertise of my two colleagues, I found out that the pond was leaking, because of its failing concrete, in fact 1930's breezeblock, construction. It was kept topped up by virtue of having a fountain fed by mains water in the centre, which although illegal by then, was doing a sterling job of pretending that the water levels were not dropping daily. In consultation with the Gardens Adviser, we decided to drain the pond and insert a butyl liner to prevent future leakage, before replanting with a greater variety of lilies. In the process, we would cap the dodgy fountain and think about replacing it some time in the future with a recycling device. That never got done in my time.
The pond looked like this before we started -
As you can see, that enormous clump of Nymphaea 'Escarboucle' at the far end was climbing out of the water by the best part of two feet, rather than lying attractively flat, and as we found out when trying to remove it, was also floating freely on the surface.
We drained the water out with a hired pump, tipping the excess liquid over the wall into the border behind, and were left with huge piles of biodegradable material, including sludge, leaf litter, lilies and blanketweed, all of which went on the compost heap. The debris was left piled up on the side of the pond for a while to allow the various water creatures to escape and hopefully find their way back into the pond at the end of the job. The fish were extracted before and during the drainage process, and stored in galvanised water tanks in our nursery, which were originally intended for irrigating the greenhouses.
Having emptied it out, we were now in a position to measure the dimensions of the pond and order a prefabricated liner. This was complicated by the fact that there was a step down part way along the bottom of the pond, which made the construction and fitting of the liner more of a puzzle. When it arrived, it was enormous, at around 20m x 5m and nearly a metre deep at one end. We had to be sure we had it the right way round, which was easy to discern as the depths at either end differed considerably, a bit of good fortune as far as choice of plants was concerned, because it allowed us to put in a range of lilies for all depths from a foot to 2'6".
It proved a pig of a job to lay the liner, as it was nigh on impossible to iron out the creases that instantly formed, and I spent hours in wellies as the hosepipe dribbled water into the huge space, treading out folds and kicking the corners to force them to fit tightly. Anything that didn't lie snugly had an air-space behind it and was liable to future puncture, despite being underlaid with a soft protective liner first. But we knew that in a garden open to the public there would be plenty of stick-poking by kids running loose, despite our endeavours to lodge most of them in the cattle-grid at the entrance. And of course we didn't know at that time that a pampered semi-adolescent beast would move into the house and start shooting the fish with an air-rifle. Good job we got the precautions right at the start.
The liner was constructed such that there was an overlap at the top edge which had to be folded over with the slabs laid on top of it. This meant that we also had to lift the slabs, some of which were huge, at at least 5' long, and replace them in such a way that people walking on them would not capsize them, and themselves, into the water. This meant leaning them slightly backwards towards the lawn. In the end the results were quite reasonable, although I must admit, pond work never grew into an all-consuming passion for me, and proved to be an area that received occasional heavy attention, rather than regular preventative maintenance. Strange that further down the line I ended up working for a water garden specialist, in a job for which I had limited enthusiasm. Or aptitude, some might say. Anyway, the end result was not too bad, at least for the first few years. This picture was in early summer the first year after restoration. Note the plank at the far left end. This was to allow the frogs and toads to climb out after completing their displays of public love-making in February each year, as well as saving the lives of thirsty mammals such as hedgehogs and birds straying into the water, and providing a place for blackbirds to preen their feathers -
I appear to have a number of pictures of the pond, despite my lack of excitement with regard to water-gardening, and I have to admit, that at least for part of the time, it looked good -
A couple of close-ups for those of you who are keen on such things.
The next is, I believe, Nymphaea 'Graziella' -
OK. Maybe I wasn't so rubbish at it. I just needed more dedication. Or a team member with webbed feet. I think I'll go out today and buy myself a barrel - that 'Graziella' is a lovely thing!
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