How To Remove A Garden Pond

So we have a small pond in our back garden which we want to remove. Couple of reasons, first being that neither of us are that good at looking after this kind of thing and also I feel its a bit unsafe with our 2 year old wanting to run around and play out there.

So I have a pretty good idea on how to remove it, drain the water, break up the mould, break down the brickwork, use some of the brickwork as a base, soil into the whole and likely grass over the top.

I'm more interested in what to do about the wildlife, theres a few frogs in there, do they take to relocating ok? Theres a large communal pond a little down the road so was thinking of trying to capture them and let them out near there to kind of rehome them?

Any tips on anything else I might need to do?

You seem to have got it covered :thumbsup: We did a similar thing due to small children getting mobile. We let the frogs find their own way to a new home, but there was a pond next door.

Last edited: Mar 27, 2014

Thankfully its actually a plastic sheet lining rather than a mould which should make things easier, however I have just had another check to find a rather large mass of frogspawn has recently appeared, will try and move that to the pond nearby

DJT75

Distinguished Member

Same here. They frogs start to leg it as the water dries up. Get the odd one come back but they adjust themselves to somewhere else. I would make sure you have far more hardcore than soil. Just 2-3 inches of soil really, to avoid dipping

Ours was a concrete lined base so took some doing to lose the last of the water. In the end we left a few inches and started chucking the bricks in. Neighbour had hundreds of broken bricks to get shot of so we used them

Cheers, its not too big, theres a good amount of bricks making a small wall around the edge and down the side of the house appears to be all the flagstones from a patio that was where the conservatory now is. My plan is to use as much of that as need to fill the whole for the most part. Then another section of garden needs levelling so I can take the soil from there, try and compact it down as I fill it in to hopefully prevent dipping in the future

I have been thinking the same thing. We have just bought a new house that has a pond, and we have a 2 year old. My wife wants to keep it as my daughter loves fish, but I can't help thinking it will be more trouble than it is worth with falling in, upkeep and there is a tonne of frogspawn in there now.
It's also one that is sunk into the ground, so even easier to fall in!

Could you maybe fence it of with some low picket stuff? So you have a clear demarcation where your daughter can look at the fish but mustn't cross?

As much as it would be nice to keep its already looking a mess and I personally just don't want the risk of there being something that could potentially hurt her. If perhaps she was a few years older but currently it's not suitable really

Slam a few barrers of concrete in there - done!

Last edited: Mar 29, 2014

Sounds like a perfect excuse for a sandpit if you ask me, ask the little un

Well three hours this afternoon and it's gone. Thought we had about 4 frogs, turned out it was about 15 bit I re-homed everyone of then to the pond down the road and hope they do well.

I thought the pond was shallow but in the end it looks like it was formed from taking a tree out originally, about 4 foot deep! Now it's all filled in and just needs top soil and turf!