Upper Pond - Still under construction. Pond and waterfall are in. The bog has yet to get soil, and edges are not built.
The whole thing
Edges built and soil in some of the bog. The Sarracenia's are just in pots to get an idea of what it will look like.
Edges built and soil in some of bog. The Sarracenia's are just in pots to get an idea of what it will look like. Open this image if you have a fast connection. It looks much better!
Soil in. Grass planted. Still lots to do. It's a 50/50 peat moss/sand mixture. The Sarracenia's are still just in pots to get an idea of what it will look like. There are some Drosera, but you have to have a very good eye to notice them. To see it now, go to the CP Bog 20XX to see its' progression
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In the beginning, there was a hole. And that hole sat...for 7 years. Well, it seemed that long. My wife swears it was 8 years. I used a small backhoe/bulldozer that I rented to dig the hole. Then I spent eternity building the walls back up to seperate the pond area from the bog areas. It would have been smarter to dig the bog by hand, as it only needed to be a couple of feet deep. I finally gave in and used bricks for the top part. Much faster. The bricks interlock so there is no cement used.
The edge is a plastic bender-board. The idea was that it was thin and I would be able to hide the edge easily. In the end, that has proved harder than I thought. I didn't want to waste a lot of space with a wide rock area, and I never liked the necklace affect. Someday I hope to find a solution. :-)
Lower Pond - Still under contruction. Pond and waterfall are in. The bog has yet to get soil, and edges are not built. Along the bottom I put in a perforated drainage pipe that goes from one end to the other and then up to the surface at the far end. It is the larger pipe you see in the emply bog area. I then covered the pipe with small rocks, and covered those with landscape fabric. This has really helped me when I need to get water out of the bog. The water became contaminated a couple of times and I have had to drain, and refill the bog several times to get the water purity back down. This pipe has been a lifesaver for that. Someday I'd like to put a pump in it and recirculate the water to simulate the movement of water in a real bog system. Right now there is a lot of anorobic activity at the bottom. It's too deep to matter to the plants, but I think it would be better not to have it.
The smaller pipe is an overflow pipe. It doesn't work well in really wet weather as my yard just gets too saturated and begins to backflow into the bog and pond. I will put in a valve this summer to stop the backflow from happening. In normal weather it works great though.
