Projects 2015: The Fish Pond

A few weeks ago I told you all about the five projects that we have planned for the year and that one of those projects was that we were going to cut down the bamboo tree and put a fish pond with a fountain in its place.

We thought long and hard about the plan and in the end we decided that we couldn’t bring ourselves to kill the bamboo tree. We use the bamboo every year and use the bamboo poles in the garden and also give them to friends and neighbours. The tree provides a great deal of shelter and privacy too, so we’ve decided that the bamboo tree will live to see another day!

Instead, we’ve decided that the pond is going to become a part of the outdoor living space by the well so that we can enjoy it. But, what type of pond should we get? We went to the local garden centre for inspiration and came back feeling downhearted, the ponds they sold were ugly, small and very pricey, but we saw that they did sell liner and that made us think that perhaps we could create our own pond. That plan didn’t come to fruition because, before we got started, we heard about a large garden centre a bit further afield near the city of Viseu, so off we went.

We came home with this (please ignore the soil) for the cost of €65:

It looks great in its final position:

Now we needed a solar-powered pond pump and fountain, which we picked up on Amazon for roughly €20. Here it is being tested:

We also needed some gravel, some aqua plants, netting and fish, all of which we could get from the local garden centre. Before we left, we filled the bowl up with water and got the pump going. We then bought six little fishies for the grand total of €9 and slowly introduced them into their new home.

Here are the latest additions to the family. They’re a bit shy still but once they get used to us we’ll take some better photos.

With the addition of some aqua plants, project ‘pond’ is now complete!