The pond has provided such respite this summer. With a gravity all its own and a cool place of apparent calm and consistency. Descend the slopes into its orbit and the temperature drops as the smell of green hangs in the air. You feel instantly that you are an intruder upon a place that has rapidly attained its own order and it is hard to believe that the pond is just in its fifth summer, with its soft edges and thrum of wildlife. 

Five years ago this August we were midway into the project. We worked in the driest months for the excavation, choosing the lowest hollow of the field and a place where it felt like still water might naturally congregate. We’d witnessed pooling here in the years of imagining this place, but the water never stayed for long after deluge so it was necessary to roll out a bentonite clay liner once we’d excavated the hole. We tapped a spring to feed the pond and as the water brimmed, a still descended that has never left this place. Within days there were water boatmen and late season dragonflies scoping its potential. That September, after rain and whilst the soil was still warm, we sowed the margins with three seed mixes to inoculate the disturbed ground. A wetland seed mix from Emorsgate Seeds where the water wicked on the banks, the immediate flanks with seed harvested from Clattinger Meadows, which are famed for their fritillaries and marsh orchids and the St. Catherine’s Valley mix from our neighbouring valley to feather the disturbed ground back into the slopes above.