A Pond In A Pot.

'What are you up to now, Suzzie?' Davy asked me, suspiciously, the other day.
          Not what I'm doing, note, but what 'I'm up to.'
          I'm reminded of the old joke where the mother says, 'Go and find out what your brother's doing and tell him to stop at once.'

          This (below) is what I'm up to.

Pond in a pot

          See that big black pot at the edge of the gravel? That's my garden pond, viewed from my kitchen door.

          I don't often watch gardening programmes, but when I do, I quite often get up to something as a result. It's probably just as well I don't watch them very often. I caught Diarmuid Gavin telling the nation that the single most effective thing you can do, to increase wildlife in your garden, is make a pond. You don't even have to dig a hole. You can put the pond in a pot.

          Something about having a pond in a pot appealed to me (not least, the bit about not digging a hole.) I started reading up on garden ponds, about how they increase the eco-variety in your garden. They increase the number of insects and the habitat for insects - and so attract more of the birds and animals who eat those insects.

          I went out and acquired a large pot. I found one on sale.It's not pretty, but it was big and inexpensive.

For days, I moved the pot about, trying to decide where to place it. For weeks, I set out buckets to catch rainwater to fill it. And then - oh, the thrill - I was able to add a water-lily - a miniature red one - and an oxengenating plant.

A pond also needs margin plants, to shelter and attract insects, and a bank for birds to land - and also to provide a way out for creatures that fall in. It's hard to provide that in a deep pot, so I slung a basket of marginal plants from the side.

There's a reed, and a couple of flowering plants, all native to Britain. It looks a bit bare at the moment, but I'm hoping other plants will come in and root on the 'bank.'

I've arranged other potted plants around it, both to soften the big black pot, and also to give animals a leg up and a leg down. I may grow a 'tier' of herbs along side it, to make them a step-ladder.

Already, I've seen more insects and birds taking an interest, and it's only been full and planted up for a day (as I write.) Only this morning there was a big wood-pigeon hopping about from line-post, to rose-arch, to fence and back again. He seemed to be trying to find a way down to the pool pot. So I'm thinking about adding some lower perches nearer to it. Not that I much want to attract thumping big wood pigeons. We have no shortage of them. But it's a start!