Creating a Bog Garden

Posted byUNIVIRTPosted inUncategorized

A few years ago I created a wildlife pond after I discovered frogs in various parts of my garden. Sure enough, the frogs soon found the pond and have been spawning there every year since. However, I’ve had on ongoing problem – once the tadpoles develop into tiny frogs, there was never a permanent place for them to graduate to that was damp and secure from predators. They would often need to make their way across the lawn to the flower beds and take their chances there.

This year I decided to rectify that by creating a bog garden beside the pond. Here’s how I did it…

Having chosen my location and shape for the bog garden, I dug down to the depth of my spade, approx 25cm. Some guides recommend digging down to about 45cm but this was more than enough digging for me!
Next, I lined the hole with some old pond liner that I had left over from my pond project of about 6 years ago. You can just about see the pond on the right of the picture. I’ve seen people using all sorts of materials for the lining including plastic compost bags – anything will do as long as drainage is restricted.
Now I made some perforations in the lining. This is important so that the water in the bog garden doesn’t become stagnant.
The next step was to make a leaky hose to keep the bog garden wet. Not all guides that I’ve read include this step but as my garden tends to be very dry, I thought it worth doing. I selected an old piece of garden hose and drilled a series of holes along its length.
I sealed one end of the hose by folding it over and securing it with a jubilee clip that I found in the shed. On the other end I attached a Hozelock connector.
Now I filled in the hole to approximately the halfway mark and laid out the leaky hose, making sure that the end with the Hozelock connector is above the surface near the edge where it can be easily accessed.
Time now to fill in the remaining earth…
Trim any excess liner to just below the level of the surface.
Finally, I connected the leaky hose to my water butt and gave the bog garden a good soaking with rainwater.

Now all that’s left to do is the planting so I’m off to the garden centre to select some plants!

Published by UNIVIRT

I'm a 25 year veteran of the IT industry, currently working for one of the worlds largest distributers as a presales consultant specialising in VMware, Veeam and converged infrastructures. https://ie.linkedin.com/in/neil-murphy-565774

One thought on “Creating a Bog Garden”

  1. Pingback: Plant layout for my Bog Garden – Adventures in Wildlife Gardening

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