Suburban Garden

by Alec & Val Scaresbrook©

There are plenty of suburban gardens with ponds, but not that many boasting the entrance to an abandoned mine as an additional water feature.

Even though Cheshire is known for its salt mines, there are none to be found for miles around this garden, tucked away in one of the county's small market towns.

In fact, when Jean and Tony Squires moved in to this house 20 years ago, the rear garden consisted of an orchard with rough grass between the apple, pear and plum trees, most of which yielded very poor crops and weren't worth keeping. Now only two apple trees remain - one kept for its fruit and the other for its attractive appearance.

As the children grew up, more ambitious gardening became possible, and Tony began the first of many gardening projects, with the abandoned mine being his latest, but certainly not his last, watery feature.

'I'm creative, but not innovative,' Tony told us. 'I'm like the Round Table motto - adopt, adapt, improve. If I see an idea, I can build on it, although the final design does depend on the available materials.'

He added, 'You could say that I'm a concepts man, not a details man. I also like quick results, so it's Jean who steps in to finish off with the planting.'

But Jean's plant buying enthusiasms are curbed by lack of space in their car. They visit garden centres in Tony's Austin 7 two-seat special, which means that she can only carry home plants that will fit on her lap. 'It limits the expense,' laughed Jean, 'And combines our interests for an enjoyable run out.'

So why is there a mine entrance in the Squires' garden? Tony answered, 'We were watching the 1992 Chelsea Flower Show on the TV and saw this impressive water feature that had been created by students of one of the colleges. It consisted of a mock mine entrance surrounded by enormous pieces of slate, with water pouring over the opening. We were really taken with this idea, especially as we wanted a surprise feature that would be fun for visitors to come across while walking around our garden. So I put my mind to constructing something similar.'

'Massive pieces of slate were impractical, inappropriate and expensive, but I realised that I could create and disguise a structure using some redundant materials that we'd inherited from the previous owners, plus other items left over from different projects.'

'We planned to tuck the feature away towards the back of the garden, where it would be out of view behind one of my other projects - a low wall and pergola. The other good reason for our chosen site was that we already had an electricity supply to the nearby shed, so would have no problem connecting up a pump.'

'Over a couple of weekends, I made the structure from old ladders, timbers and breeze blocks, with a roof of scrap corrugated iron. I turfed the roof and, over the entrance, embedded a spray bar that I made by drilling holes in a polythene pipe. I bought the smallest pump that I could find because I didn't want a torrent of water, just a gentle flow.' 'Originally there was a recessed cavity with trellis inside to convey the idea of a blocked entrance, but this didn't look right. The effect was tatty, so we tried other ideas, but the green net that we eventually used was the most successful. Now there are far more materials available at garden centres for projects like this and it's probably much easier to get it right first time.'

Jean continued the tale, 'At first the water was re-circulated from a small pool at the base, made with leftover pond liner. We submerged the pump and hid the pipe behind the timbers.'

'It worked but gave the wrong effect, and filled up with frogs. Tony has a phobia about frogs and I'm not that keen on them either, especially when they jump. So we cleaned out the pool, placed a piece of wire mesh on top and covered it with pebbles. Now the effect is just right, and the frogs stay away, which pleases both of us.'

'I've grown ivy over the mine and made two small bog gardens alongside for ferns and marginals. I've lined the areas with pond liner to stop rainwater draining away, and they also receive splashes from the mine. The planting includes Primula candelabra, soft shield fern (Polystichum setiferum), hart's- tongue fern (Asplenium scolopendrium) and ivies (Hedera canariensis 'Gloire de Marengo' and H. helix 'Parsley Crested').'

'Some of the bog garden plants started off life in our pond, but for various reasons became relegated to other areas. Now our pond is semi-formal in effect, with only water lilies growing in it.'

'The pond was never intentional, although we get a lot of pleasure from it, watching the fish and the birds.' remarked Jean.

Tony recounted the story of the pond, 'When we came here there was only a strip of concrete between the house and the orchard. We wanted a transition area here, with something of interest near the house. I'd already built a rockery along our boundary, and I wanted to create a haven for sitting and viewing the rockery and the rest of the garden. I thought that a raised patio would give a better view, and a wall would shelter us on windy days.'

'I wanted a cottagey feel to it so chose bricks made to resemble Cheshire seconds. Then I felt that I needed something extra to gaze over, and at the time the TV programmes were full of Japanese gardens. So I decided to build a sunken garden next to the raised patio.'

'During the excavation stage, everyone who visited mistook the project for a pond, and we had to explain that no, it wasn't going to be a pond, but a Japanese sunken garden.'

'Then, once I'd dug it out, I could see that the perspective was all wrong and that the idea wouldn't work, whatever I did with it. So, reluctantly, I did make a pond, having extended the area and created a marginal shelf.'

Wasn't it a problem digging so close to the apple tree? Tony replied, 'No, I didn't come across any tree roots at all.'

'The problems I had were with the liner edge. Having built the raised patio first when I had no intention of making a pond, there wasn't a simple way of securing the liner. I tried to seal it to the vertical bricks with mastic, but it didn't look right. So I anchored the liner on the patio's side by building up from the marginal shelf with stone and soil, lapping the liner underneath. This means that this edge is lower than the rest of the pond, so unfortunately the liner is exposed along the other edges.'

Jean added,'I originally planted up this lower edge, but have now given up because the birds gather mud for their nests and turf out the plants. Now all that's there is watercress (Nasturtium officinale), which seems to resist this onslaught.'

'Originally I had lots of marginals in crates on the shelf around the pond, but these spread too much so I took them out. We also bought a few goldfish from the local garden centre. They look after themselves - we don't feed them - and we're probably on the third generation now. We're not sure how many are there at the moment because of the green water.'

'No doubt a few have been eaten by herons although we've only seen one once in the garden. We were also delighted to have a kingfisher visiting - even though it did steal the fish. Tony just happened to be looking out of an upstairs' window and saw a bright blue flash as a bird flew across the pond. It perched on the statue's head and swooped down to catch a fish. It was a regular visitor for some time and beautiful to see.'

The green water in the pond is a problem that's been taxing the Squires for years. 'I don't want crystal clear water -

I'd keep the fish in the sink if wanted that - but I would like the top few inches to be clearer,' said Tony.

'We should have installed a filter system at the same time that we built the pond. After a couple of years I made a filter using an old cistern filled with gravel and filter materials, but it didn't work very well and wasn't very attractive, so we abandoned that.'

'Even when the water lily leaves cover most of the surface, the water never clears, although when we had a lot of duckweed it was better. We tried straw one year, stuffed into old tights and weighed down, but that didn't work either. So we're still looking for a simple, elegant solution to the algal problem.'

Meanwhile, Tony is brewing on his next project, which is to fulfil his dream of having an oriental willow-pattern type bridge. This, of course, means that he'll have to construct a stream for it to cross. When we left, he was musing over its course and construction.