Big day for the pond. The first job was to throw the hornwort into the water, where it sunk out of sight. In the winter it’s dark green and sinks to the bottom, but in the spring it will rise back up and be a better colour. A few bits had broken off the main piece, so it’ll be interesting to see if they sprout too.

The new creeping jenny has gone into the water, with the pot on one of my bricks. I’ll see when the water clears whether that needs any adjusting, but it at least doesn’t feel precarious.

Once established on my ladder across the pond (which later turned out to have given me huge bruises on my legs), I managed to straighten the sweet flag a bit on its bricks. With Mum’s help I then set to building up the side and back banks, removing the tiles and replacing them with pieces of wood and filling in with piles of soil. As I went, I added blue iris bulbs among the white mazes, purple loosestrife, veronica and thyme. I’d planned all the positioning the night before in Photoshop and made my list of instructions, which was invaluable.

The marsh marigold is just a tiny shoot at the moment, and is among the stones near the big rock. A beautiful piece of bark foraged from the rec is covering the pole it’s planted on and some of the exposed compost/root system. Another thyme – less trailing than the other has been planted behind the rock.

In the afternoon I worked on planting two dwarf chamomiles and a pink phlox on the front edge. I hope to have given them enough soil for their roots to be happy. Fingers crossed they’ll be ok.

I foraged some lovely bits of wood from the remains of the wood chip pile outside D’s plot and tucked them into the banks here and there for shelter and liner coverage. The pebbles then went all around the edge and I added a few handfuls carefully onto the marginal shelf as accurately as I could. I’ll have to wait for the water to clear more to see what it looks like and if I want to add more. I probably have a bit under half a bag left. Thank goodness I didn’t use cobbles; they would have been far too big.

I also finally found a use for the third paddlestone. It has made a perfect toad house just beyond the big stone, with wood, leaves, pebbles and mud making a great hide hole, just as I had wanted.

With everything in place, I cut the liner back from the grass, covered the edge with soil and sprinkled a little grass seed to help the ground recover. I started the pond project on 6th October and finished (but for a couple of tiny finesses I want to make) on 5th November. 4 weeks and 2 days; 9 allotment days.