EXTREME water meadow garden makeover

Loxley

These guys turned a modest suburban garden into an amazing ecological water garden

Water meadow gardening | UK Aquatic Plant Society (ukaps.org)

From this:



to this:

Pete.8

Wow that's amazing
Nowhere to hang the washing now tho  😁

Fairygirl

That's exactly what I was thinking @Pete.8!   

Beautiful though. 

didyw

Wow!  That is amazing!

CharlotteF

Wow, that's incredible! I wonder how much water it takes to keep it 'wet' or if it more or less looks after itself once filled. 

Topbird

That is one amazing make over! Having skimmed through the blog I find it doubly impressive that they only really started constructing this time last year and all the planting has been done since spring this year. Looks like it's been there forever!

Gwenr

Bet it's not in the South East, we had ponds and lakes drying up, no way would I want that on my water meter, but it does look impressive.

Topbird

It's actually 5 or 6 smaller ponds but it's all designed with the board walks to look as though the whole area is one big lake and wetland. Think (may be wrong!) the garden may be somewhere around Bedford / Milton Keynes. The blog is well worth reading.

Fire

Gwenr said:

Bet it's not in the South East, we had ponds and lakes drying up, no way would I want that on my water meter, but it does look impressive.

There would be ways of managing it so it shouldn't take a lot of water from the mains, esp if they have good storage systems. They chose a great year to start it in the south - some areas double the average long term average rainfall this year.

Gwenr

Fire said:

Gwenr said:

Bet it's not in the South East, we had ponds and lakes drying up, no way would I want that on my water meter, but it does look impressive.

There would be ways of managing it so it shouldn't take a lot of water from the mains, esp if they have good storage systems. They chose a great year to start it in the south - some areas double the average long term average rainfall this year.

Unfortunately or fortunately depending if you holiday by the sea, we had weeks of no rain at all. We watched as other parts of the country had showers, while our temps sored to the 30s and our poor plants suffered. It does look wonderful, but you need to have deep pockets to achieve such an awesome display, if we ever win the lottery, I know who to contact when I get my 2 acre garden. 

water_meadow_gardening

Hi there, this is my garden! It featured yesterday on Gardeners' World (Thu 22 June)!

To answer some of the points in the thread above;

- the water garden is made up of a series of ponds, which look like three bodies of water, separated by wooden paths, but actually comprises of seven ponds, plus around 20 container ponds dug in around the paths, to allow me to grow reeds and bullrushes all over. There is no wet area/ bog garden as such, just ponds alongside ordinary garden soil (clay). 
- I do need to top up the ponds every now and then and this needs to be done before the water levels drop below the baskets in which the marginal plants sit on the first planting shelves inside the ponds. 
- There is no place for a drying rack in the garden 😀 but I do have a large decking area between the house and the first pond.

The GW piece was recorded last August, in the second year of the garden. If you want to see more recent pictures, head to my IG account water_meadow_gardening.
More details of the water garden construction can be found on the pinned posts there.

Regards,
Andre