Does anyone know anything about gardening?

Google imaged out of curiosity and ended up here: https://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/diy/creating-a-wildlife-pond/

It has nice egs of using grass up to the edge and other planting around it.

I'd agree with something to weight it. If you don't like the look of stones, or even continuous stone edging then I'd get some jumbo gravel and a few larger flat rocks and use those to anker it, then cover with soil and grass seed.

Has anyone ever made one of these pot pond things?

My OH is prang about having any sort of pond or water in the garden due to drowning, but I'd love water somewhere.

Also does anyone know what the shallowest you could have a pond is, and will it just get infested with mosquitos?

I had one of these, made using a rubber barrel container from B&Q (a lot of their containers don't have holes). I got one of those cheap solar fountains to keep the water moving, didn't seem to get mosquitoes.

Ha ha excellent diagram:)

Thanks for the tips. The liner is probably 30/40cm wider than the pond itself with turf on top, which I hope will go some way to stop it sliding in on itself.

I’ll probably go with packing more earth on top at the edges, and I might be coming around to the idea of random stones around the edge too.

https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/actions/how-create-mini-pond

One of ours has gone nuts but the other one in more shade hasn’t got going at all yet. It was fine last year so a bit of a mystery

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I might be coming around to the idea of random stones around the edge too.

I know exactly what you mean. No offence to anyone who has this sort of setup, but it always looks a bit fake to me and I only like it if the whole this is sharp and crisp.

One thing you could do is if you have longer thin slabs is to make a mud mortar and then try and get mosses and mini ferns to grow out of them. Iirc for moss you want to find a load and coarsely chop it up, then mix with water compost and a bit of milk or yogurt. Then paint it on.

I finally had a chance to investigate today and I think they’re in trouble, two of the three have an orange fungus growing at the base and the other also has very squidgy stems so I guess it was rot over winter. Usually with our chalky soil the moisture just flies through. Especially annoying as I’d trained one to go right up and cover our kids climbing tower.

On the flip side our wisteria and salad bed are making a very tranquil space at the end of our garden.

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Today marks the 10 time in 2 years I've emptied the hotbin. Such an amazing purchase.

We got one a few weeks ago. It's finally up to temperature (probably didn't have enough stuff in it to begin with) and I just drained the juice from the bottom. Hope that isn't a frequent task - it certainly has a flavour

We planted some brassica seedlings into a raised planter and they were savaged by little tiny black slugs. I put a small tub of sourdough starter mixed with water and sugar in the middle and collected about 30 in one night!

I just let it drain out into a takeaway container everyday and tip it onto the lawn. Just remember that it shouldn't smell and if it does, just add more carbon into it. If it gets cold, just add a catcher of grass clippings or hedge clippings.
I've emptied it a few more times than when I linked above and have extended the border to an equal width the whole way down. Got some chives, rhubarb, lambs ear, elephants ears, a climbing hydrangea, a panicle hydrangea and all manner of other random stuff in there now. Will hopefully come together nicely in a year or so.

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I did in the past. They freeze up in winter so no fish or anything.
Get some plants in and it should be fine. Evaporation in summer is also an issue

Love your pond. I had similar in my old house but couldn't take with as 8 was self moving and my partner was ill so mostly solo.
I'll probably try to replicate your beds too.

I think the smell may have been the stewed worms from the half-chooched compost I mixed in to start with. We'll see what it's like next time

Cheers, birds get a drink but I’ve struggled with some of the plants as the water level fluctuates so much during the summer. The irises always persevere, good luck with yours!

So far the slugs have ignored my tomatoes in favour of my cucumber, courgette, sunflower, and squash seedlings! If only I'd been clever enough to plant up some sacrificial spares!

Yeah, I've got two ponds, and one of them is like this. I've used a plastic trug for it with bricks in to make it shallower. Unfortunately all the plants died in mine thanks to last year's drought so it is just a bare container of water right now. It is absolutely PACKED with mosquitoes but I'm ok with that because they will all be dead soon, once the linked treatment kicks in (which is quickly).

Probably a question for @ColinTheBald: I'm thinking of doing the gravel board path thing, or maybe just pour my own slabs as then make them look a bit more interesting. What can I use as a sub base considering I want to plant things in the gaps. I'm guessing it needs to be permeable, so in theory type 3? But it appears to be kind of impossible to actually buy that anywhere.

They're so heavy and broad I'd assume just some type 1 under each slab would do it? Main thing I guess you need is to get them level and at the right depth

Yeah but type 1 doesn't drain well.

The mosquito’s that will no doubt start to live in our pond will become food for the bats and birds, which is exactly why we dug the pond in the first place. Won’t be trying to kill them in other ways.

It's cool, I live near a canal and loads of my neighbours have standing water, so there's plenty of places for my local mozzies to succeed in their quest to pass along their shitty little genes. But I am very allergic to them, so they can all fuck off from my immediate environs as much as possible, because sitting indoors with all the doors and windows shut all summer sucks all of the balls at once.

Ouch! :(

They ate all my sunflowers...

Does it matter if it's beneath a big concrete slab?