Team Green have been hard at work today, restoring our school pond. This was the final stage in a long process that actually began with 2024-25’s Team Green children…
When we first uncovered our old pond area two years ago, it was barely recognisable as a pond at all! Here are a few photos to show what it looked like back then:
As you can see, it needed a lot of work! Back then, the children managed to dig out years-worth of mud and sludge, to reveal the old pond liner, which was ripped and no longer doing its job.
Fast-forward to last year’s spring term, and we were ready to restore the pond, but to our surprise we found lots of frogspawn in some water that had collected in the bottom of the old liner. We didn’t want to disturb any wildlife, so we decided to put our plans on hold.
Today, we finally managed to complete the job! Here’s what the pond looked like at the start of the day…
As you can see, we’d set aside some containers to help us reuse as much of the water as possible. Rainwater that’s made its way into a pond naturally is much better for wildlife than tap water, so this was an important part of the process.
The children got to work emptying the water. They also worked with Mr Eccles to cut some decking board to size. We’d be using this to secure the new liner to the sides of the pond.
We then laid some matting and got the liner in position. This was a tricky part!
After that, we needed to screw the decking board to the old wood, making sure to hold the liners in place.
Then last but not least, it was time to refill the pond! We used all of our containers, then emptied two large water butts, and finally topped it up with a little water from the hose.
What a brilliant day! And we already have our first resident… Uno the Frog! Well done everyone.
