16/12/2025
Here's a 6-day pond from scratch!
We've been meeting at the nursery every Thursday to dig and seal this pond as a fun activity to do together as a team. The purpose of this pond was to catch the RW from our gazebo roof and some surface runoff, which gets channelized into a basin and then to a sedimentation zone. Additionally, the pond is for biodiversity, beauty and to cool down the southwestern winds that enter the gazebo in the hottest months.
The stepped form is to be able to place potted aquatic plants at different levels, and the deepest point (3ft) is filled with clay for the lotuses to go in. Some shallower areas are filled with soil to create beds for reeds and other shoreland species.
We sealed it in 2.5 hours with 6 members using the gunny dip method (refer to our blog for details on lining).
Two frogs moved in while we were curing the cement itself, and butterflies came in for mud puddling. Dragon flies came soon after we filled in the water but the main chief guest, the Spectacled Cobra arrived boldly in broad daylight to inaugurate the new frog restaurant in town.
This method of sealing is not foolproof from the beginning, it will take a few bouts of rain water to carry silt to trap the holes and cracks in the cement gunny, but it is surely the cheapest and easiest way to seal an organic shaped pond.
It's always a deep realisation and a 'keystone species' moment when a sapien makes sweet water available in a parched landscape. What an easy and wonderful thing it is to be able to make safe and appropriate water bodies for our kin.
