The Great British Garden Revival: Expert on creating ponds
Charlie Dimmock has featured on a plethora of gardening programmes over the years, including Ground Force and, most recently, Garden Rescue. The 54-year-old from Hampshire has enjoyed gardening since she was a child and often shares her passion with viewers. In The Great British Garden Revival, Charlie showed viewers how to create their own garden pond.
Charlie showed viewers how to fix “sleepers” around the pond in a thick, wooden border.
She said the sleepers have to be level around the pond.
She continued: “We’ve dug out the pond in the centre so that’s sixty centimetres from where our water level is to the bottom of the pond.
“We’ve now got to just line the pond with sand so that it beds the liner.”
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Charlie said you have to use sand at the bottom as a soft surface which “prevents punctures from the stones in the underling soil.”
She added: “It’s important to use a good layer of sand or specialist horticultural felt before placing the liner on top.”
The gardening expert then asked someone else to help her spread a liner across the pond.
She recommended using a butyl liner as it fits any shape or size of pond.
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However, to get the liner to fit, Charlie said gardeners need to know three key measurements.
“The maximum width, length, and depth so that your supplier can calculate the total area of liner that you’ll need,” she said.
Charlie warned fellow gardeners that there would be plenty of overhang from the liner onto the outskirts of the pond.
However, she said although it may be tempting to cut the overhanging liner, you mustn’t do it until the pond has been filled completely.
“It’s amazing how much more it’ll actually sink in,” she added.
“Ideally you’d fill the pond with rainwater but the likelihood of you having that much rain water around is limited.
“So we’re going to have to use tap water.”
Charlie warned gardeners to be patient as it will likely take “quite a while” for the pond to fill up.
Once the water is in there, you can pull the liner against the weight of the water to neaten it up and get rid of some of the wrinkles.
The gardening pro said it’s unlikely you’ll get rid of every fold in the liner but that it’s unlikely you will notice them when the pond is filled with plants and wildlife.
She added: “The good thing about the folds is that they are great little hiding places for aquatic wildlife.”
Garden Rescue with Charlie Dimmock airs today at 3.35pm on BBC One.
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