Wilde Waters Ltd, 195 Portsmouth Road, Cobham (2026)

05/02/2025

This is a simple & peaceful close up video of goldfish swimming around busily in a pond with lots of fish. You can watch many different individual fish move in and out of the frame over a long take of 6 minutes 43 seconds.

This was taken during a pond clean out, just before I started to catch them and put them into a temporary tank and so for a brief while the fish are in only a few inches of water. You can see that they are near the bottom of the pond as they are stirring up the mud as they move around.

The camera is handheld so the frame is not completely steady. Perhaps I will do another one with a tripod.

A bit of relaxing slow time viewing (not slow motion). Make yourself a cup of tea or coffee and immerse yourself in this fishy video.

For pond maintenance, pond cleaning or pond servicing in Sunbury, Middlesex TW16 and surrounding areas please contact us on (01932) 866898 or visit us on our website at www.wildewaters.co.uk

24/01/2025

A gallery of waterlilies:

In summer, waterlily flowers are the jewels in a pond. Here is a selection of photographs of flowers produced by plants that I have provided for my customers. I hope you like they help you to banish the winter blues.

If you would like one of these photographs enlarged and hanging on your wall then do contact us as we are going to be creating some art prints for sale.

For pond maintenance, pond cleaning or pond servicing in Fetcham, Surrey KT22 and surrounding areas please contact us on (01932) 866898 or visit us on our website at www.wildewaters.co.uk

24/01/2025

Pond Clean & Refurbishment - New Plants:

This was for the new owner of a pond that I have previously worked on in Cobham, Surrey. Previously I had cleaned the pond out and replaced all the plants. This was some years ago and it was clear that the pond had had minimum attention since then. The pond had not been cleaned out since my last visit and the plants had become very overgrown.

The pond is a formal design with decking overhanging on one side. Around the edge of the pond is a capping of heavy granite edging stones. There is a drilled stone fountain feature. There are two large planting bays constructed using large concrete blocks. The blocks had not been rendered but were left exposed. Only a shallow depth at the top of each planting bay is available for soil with the rest of the bay filled with ballast. There is a plastic sheet under the soil separating the soil from the ballast.

I drained the pond down using a submersible pump. I tanked up the fish which were a variety of goldfish types. The tank contained an aerator and was covered by a net. Next I removed the mud, loading it into buckets and disposing of it nearby behind a row of conifer hedging. I then pressure washed the pond, the drilled stone fountain feature and the granite capping. I gave the pond its second clean out to remove the mud and dirty water created by doing this.

I removed the pebbles from the pebble top dressing that I had originally used to cover the soil between plants the first time around. I cut up and removed the plants from the bays. I separated out the best of these for re-use and bagged up the rest for disposal. I provided new soil laced with fertiliser for the two planting bays. I planted into these aquatic marginal plants using some original plants and some new ones. The marginal plants would provide flowers at different times across the growing season. I gave the planted bays a pebble dressing - this is attractive but it will also stop the goldfish from digging around in the soil and turning the pond a muddy brown. I potted up some deep water aquatics into aquatic baskets to be placed across the floor of the pond - waterlilies and a water hawthorn. Originally the previous owner wanted me to re-use and re-pot the existing waterlilies which were all of the same colour - a pale yellow. The new owner allowed me to bring in two new waterlilies each of a different colour; so now there is a pink, a white and a pale yellow waterlily.

I refilled the pond with water treated to remove the chlorine. I returned the fish to the pond. Lastly I took away all the rubbish to the tip and returned to tidy up and collect my tools.

The pond looks a little bare right now with plants cut back and with space around them and that it how it will be for the duration of the winter. Come the spring, the new plants will wake up and grow, getting larger and stronger across the year. I would expect all of the plants to do well and flower next year but those plants that flower later in the year will do better as they will have had longer to establish themselves before flowering. The water hawthorn, a favourite of mine will flower winter or summer (but not continuously) and it is quite possible that the customer will get some flowers from this plant over this winter.

For pond maintenance, pond cleaning or pond servicing in Bookham, Surrey KT23 and surrounding areas please contact us on (01932) 866898 or visit us on our website at www.wildewaters.co.uk

03/12/2024

Pond Clean & Refurbishment - New Aquatic plants, New Pond Filter - Informal Concrete Pond with Stream and Stepping Stones:

This was for a new customer in Horsley, Surrey. The pond had been long neglected and had become very overgrown. The pump no longer worked and needed replacing. The customer asked me to install a pond filtration system.

I drained the pond down using a submersible pump. The plants were very overgrown and these I cut up and removed from the pond for bagging up and taking away. Next I removed the mud; loading it into buckets and disposing of it nearby in the bushes. I then pressure washed the pond and the stream. I gave the pond its second clean out to remove the mud and dirty water created by doing this. I removed the old pipe, cutting it off where it went into the side of the pond capping it off at the wall. I installed the new pump and pipe using a black reinforced hose. I installed the new filter, a canister filter with an external ultra-violet clarifier in the bushes behind the pond (there was a large convenient space behind the pond in the bushes were the filter could be located in a hidden position but with easy access for servicing). I provided new plants - deep water aquatics (two waterlilies of different colour and a water hawthorn) and a selection of marginal plants that would provide flowers at different times across the growing season. I then re-filled the pond with water. Lastly I loaded up my tools and tidied up.

The plants will of course do little now over the winter but will be ready for the spring. Across next year the new plants will grow and get larger and stronger. I would expect all of the plants to do well and flower next year but those plants that flower later in the year will do better as they will have had longer to establish themselves before flowering. There is an exceptional plant that I included in the pond. Water hawthorn will flower winter or summer (but not continuously) and it is quite possible that the customer will get some flowers from this plant over this winter.

For pond maintenance, pond cleaning or pond servicing in Byfleet, Surrey KT14 and surrounding areas please contact us on (01932) 866898 or visit us on our website at www.wildewaters.co.uk

27/11/2024

Pond Clean - Large Circular Formal Pond:

This is a pond with which I have had a long involvement of over fifteen years. It is a shared pond located in the garden of a large apartment complex constructed by Octagon Developments. The garden is on a hill sloping down to a large long lake.

When I first came I could see that a very feeble attempt at planting had been made - a collection of water plants had been bought from an aquatic centre in four inch pots and plopped in the pond here and there. Unsurprisingly these plants had remained tiny and without any impact.

There were no planting shelves for water plants. The shallow slope of the pond sides was a problem. It makes it hard to achieve depth for marginal aquatic plants without having the planting containers a long way out from the sides. I constructed platforms to support large shallow crates of aquatic plants. The shallow crates allowed me to keep the plants close to the sides of the pond. I constructed these platforms in a symmetrical pattern to complement the geometric shape of the pond.

I planted up waterlilies of different colours into multiple standard aquatic baskets collected into four locations grouped according to colour. I also put in water hawthorn in four locations. This is a beautiful deep water aquatic which produces lots of delicate white flowers. It flowers all the year round with short periods of rest. It is marvellous for providing a lovely show of flowers in the winter when you might expect nothing at all.

The photographs here show the annual pond clean where I drain the pond, take out the mud, pressure wash the sides and re-pot the aquatic plants, dividing them or adding new plants according to their condition and providing them with fresh soil and fertiliser. I also clean the ponds central tiered fountain and service the pump. It is also a good opportunity to address any other problems that might have arisen over the last twelve months.

For pond maintenance, pond cleaning or pond servicing in Molesey, Surrey KT8 and surrounding areas please contact us on (01932) 866898 or visit us on our website at www.wildewaters.co.uk

26/11/2024

Ponds Full Of Autumn Leaves - pond maintenance:

Now Autumn is in full swing, many of the ponds that I am visiting are filling up with leaf fall; either from trees overhead dropping leaves directly into the water or because the wind is chasing the fallen leaves around the garden until they end up in the pond. If the leaves are dropping and there is a lot of rain the leaves will tend to stay where they have fallen on the ground but when we have a dry Autumn then the wind will move the leaves around much more easily.

The photographs show a before and after. I was there on one of my monthly pond maintenance visits. I took out the leaves and did some other tidying work - trimming away brown leaves from the aquatic plants, treating the pond for blanketweed etc. I think that the difference after I had finished is quite striking. When I arrived the pond was in chaos and when I left the pond was looking neat and attractive for the time of year.

For pond maintenance, pond cleaning or pond servicing in Shepperton, Middlesex TW17 and surrounding areas please contact us on (01932) 866898 or visit us on our website at www.wildewaters.co.uk

25/11/2024

Walking Waterlilies: This is a surprising phenomenon. Waterlilies if unhappy with their location will extend their length as they go in search of somewhere more to their liking.

This photograph is of a waterlily potted up in a small aquatic basket. You can see how the rhizome (the long woody structure) has become elongated with the shoot and roots at the end a long way from the original basket. In it's original basket it had access to fresh soil and fertiliser and this was enough for it to thrive and increase in size and produce flowers but still it was dissatisfied with the small basket and shallow water and so it escaped looking for a better life.

This waterlily is one of four waterlilies in the same pond. The other waterlilies were potted up into standard size aquatic baskets and I placed those in fairly deep water. The other waterlily was to go in the last remaining position which was in shallow water and so it was necessary to use a small basket to give some depth of water over the top of the basket (If I had put it in a standard basket the waterlily would have been too close to the pond surface). Each waterlily was provided with fresh soil and fertiliser and a pebble dressing to stop the fish from digging around in the soil.

The other waterlilies were content in their baskets and in the year between being potted up and my coming to re-pot them they had remained growing within the confinement of their original baskets. The waterlily in the small basket in the shallow water did not. It went looking for a better place to live. Too bad I came along when I did and re-potted it and put it back in its small basket.

Waterlilies don't really like being in aquatic baskets. What they really want is to put their roots into a large area of deep mud in two feet or more of water. That is fine for natural ponds (although they can get out of hand even in large ponds and lakes) but it is not usually convenient for a garden pond. Planting your waterlilies into aquatic baskets provides you with a bit more convenience. The planted basket can be easily removed from the pond and re-potted when necessary.

Waterlilies are hungry plants. Give them a good dose of the right kind of fertiliser and not only will they put up with living in the confinement of an aquatic basket but they will flourish and produce growth and prolific flowers. Put them in an aquatic basket without any fertiliser and they are likely to be much less happy and may well struggle and even dwindle.

So often I see waterlilies that have been bought at a garden or aquatic centre. These will often be juvenile plants in tiny pots, planted in gravel. These waterlilies will tend to struggle for a very long time until the plant has managed to climb out of its basket and get its feet into the mud lying on the floor of the pond around the basket. At which point no longer confined and now able to spread out its roots and feed it will now mature and increase in size and produce flowers.

Waterlilies don't much like being divided and re-potted and take time to recover and so I will only do this if absolutely necessary. If the waterlily hasn't become too big for the pond and is still reasonably contained within its original basket but is showing signs of failing because of a lack of nutrients then I will add fertiliser to the basket but otherwise leave the basket more or less alone.

For pond maintenance, pond cleaning or pond servicing in Oxshott, Surrey KT22 and surrounding areas please contact us on (01932) 866898 or visit us on our website at www.wildewaters.co.uk

05/06/2024

Pond refurbishment - pond clean, new aquatic plants & regular monthly pond maintenance in Horsell, Woking, Surrey: I have been looking after this pond for one year now - I have cleaned it and planted it and now I look after it visiting the pond once a month to provide a full pond maintenance service.

These photographs demonstrate how quickly new water plants can mature after a pond has been refurbished. The photographs show the pond as it was when I first visited the house, how it looked after I cleaned and planted it up and the same pond looking very established only a short time later. The final photograph shows that the Water Hawthorn that I planted in the pond is continuing to provide lots of flowers even as the pond is winding down into the winter. Water Hawthorn can be found in flower in the pond at any time over the winter even in the gloomiest part of the year.

When I first visited the pond, the customer had very recently moved into the house and the pond was in a state of neglect. In particular the pond was infested with blanketweed. The aquatic plants were not well chosen. Initially, I cleaned the pond and provided a full planting scheme.

I took away the blocks of walling stone that had been arranged into bays and filled with soil to make planting areas for the aquatic plants. I replaced these with aquatic plants planted into aquatic baskets. This did two things - it made the pond look bigger (the bays occupied a lot of space in the pond) and by putting the aquatic plants into baskets the plants were kept separate from each other. When you plant multiple plants into a single communal bay there are some plants which are very good at quickly invading the whole of the space. Keeping the plants in baskets keeps these invasive but otherwise attractive plants under control.

I also put in a pebble beach. This did two things - it provided a way to secure and hide the filter return pipe and by passing the water through the pebbles to diffuse the powerful jet of water coming out of this pipe into a smoother gentler flow. The pebble beach was also an attractive addition to the pond and provided an attractive location to plant marginal aquatic plants.

Following the pond refurbishment (pond clean and aquatic planting), I was asked to provide regular maintenance of the pond. I visit the pond once a month all year round. Maintenance of this pond includes adding treatments to control blanketweed (and removal of blanketweed by hand when necessary), trimming dead leaves from the plants, skimming the surface of the pond to remove floating debris, cleaning the pumps (one fountain pump and one filter pump), emptying the basket of the pond skimmer and backwashing the filter.

An annual pond clean will also be necessary. As part of an annual pond clean I will drain the pond down and provide temporary accommodation for the fish. I will take out the mud that has built up over the course of the year and I will re-pot the plants dividing them (water plants quickly get large if they are happy and are provided with what they want) and providing them with fresh soil and fertiliser.

For pond maintenance, pond cleaning or pond servicing in Shepperton, Middlesex TW17 and surrounding areas please contact us on (01932) 866898 or visit us on our website at www.wildewaters.co.uk

05/06/2024

Pond clean & regular monthly pond maintenance in Esher, Surrey: I have been looking after this pond since 2019. Initially, I cleaned the pond and provided a full planting scheme. This was followed up by an annual pond clean.

The original pond construction pre-dated the customer buying the house. This original pond was at ground level. A few years ago some improvements were made to the garden. The pond was retained but re-built making it into a formal raised pond with a smooth rendered exterior, painted white and with a stone paving, capping. A paved garden path was laid across the lawn. The path visited the pond and bent around it before heading further up the garden. The pond contains no fish.

An annual pond clean is important and for this pond it is primarily concerned with removing the mud that has built up over the year and re-potting the plants and providing them with fresh soil and fertiliser.

Alone and unsupported by regular maintenance a pond will quickly run into trouble and this is what would usually happen here. I would come and clean the pond and no further maintenance of the pond would take place until I came a year later. When I did come the signs of neglect were very obvious - a great deal of blanketweed in the pond, uncared for plants with lots of dead leaves (The leaves on water plants will eventually be replaced by fresh growth and the old leaves will go brown. I would recommend that these brown leaves should be removed to keep the plants looking fresh), even baskets of plants knocked over by strong winds and not put back into place.

Eventually, I was asked to take over the regular maintenance of the pond and now I visit the pond once a month. Maintenance of this pond includes adding treatments to control blanketweed (and removal of blanketweed by hand when necessary, trimming dead leaves from the plants, skimming the surface of the pond to remove floating debris. Annual pond cleaning does of course continue to be necessary.

For pond maintenance, pond cleaning or pond servicing in Oxshott, Surrey KT22 and surrounding areas please contact us on (01932) 866898 or visit us on our website at www.wildewaters.co.uk

26/01/2024

Pond clean out in Cobham.

These photographs relate to my last post but this seemed to deserve a dedicated feature as it is quite an extreme example. Pumps need cleaning and servicing from time to time. This pump has been left un-regarded for so long that the aquatic plants in the pond have first surrounded the pump and then invaded it growing through the strainer cage filling it with their roots. (This is a submersible pump with a central pump surrounded by an external perforated cage which is there to stop the leaves and debris but let the water through to the pump.

I first cleaned off the outside of the pump (the strainer). Then I took it apart - this is a Laguna pump and this is easy to do. There are a small number of yellow screws holding the black cage together. Each screw needs just a single turn to open or to close. Once I had removed the strainer, I took out the aquatic plant roots and brushed and washed the pump. I checked the impeller (that part of the pump that spins like a propeller and pushes the water) to make sure that it was not blocked with debris. I then re-assembled the pump and put it back in the cleaned pond.

The owner is older and it is entirely understandable that she would find servicing a submersible pump a formidable task and might neglect it. We do offer a full pond maintenance service that does cover cleaning and servicing pumps. I would advise her against doing this herself. I have another older customer who slipped over doing this job and broke her arm.

I like the Laguna submersible pumps. They are a fairly unsophisticated design but they seem to last a decent length of time and they don't block as easily as some other pumps. I have seen them successfully used in ponds that hadn't been cleaned out in years and were dirty, full of leaves and other organic debris. This is a difficult place for a submersible pump as the debris will get sucked towards the pump causing the pump to block and slow down or stop. Yes, the Laguna pumps will block and need cleaning but they cope better than you might expect with difficult circumstances and need less attention than many other pumps.

For pond maintenance, pond cleaning or pond servicing in Oxshott, Surrey KT22 and surrounding areas please contact us on (01932) 866898 or visit us on our website at www.wildewaters.co.uk

24/01/2024

Pond clean in Cobham: This was a pond clean for a customer for whom I have been working for a few years now. She is an older lady. When I am invited to come and clean the pond it is only when the pond has become very neglected and overgrown, as can be seen here in the photographs. Understandably, looking after a pond is a physical challenge for older people. (We do offer a full pond maintenance service and I would recommend our monthly pond maintenance service plus an annual pond clean to remove the mud and repot the plants to stop them getting overgrown) I would not recommend putting on waders and getting into a pond unless you are in very good physical shape as it is easy to slip and fall over.

My first step was to drain the pond down. This exposed a quite extraordinary, level of growth. The whole pond had become a solid block of plants (roots and shoots) and fallen leaves. I had to carefully remove this growth taking care not to cut through the pump cables hidden beneath. This is a ticklish operation as the pump and its cables are entirely hidden from view as they have been swallowed up by the plants. Once the aquatic plants had been removed the remainder of the work was more straight forward. I took out the mud, loading it into buckets and disposing of it in the bushes. The pond has a pebble beach planted with aquatics. Over time, quite a few of the pebbles had been pushed into the deep water. I collected these up and cleaned them for re-use. I took all of the pebbles off the beach shelf and cleaned these also. I put the beach pebbles back on the shelf putting plants into the pebbles - re-using the best of the aquatic plants and providing new ones where needed. I serviced the pumps. I took out the planted aquatic baskets and divided the plants and re-potted them using fresh soil and fertiliser. I re-filled the pond with water and serviced the filter.

For pond maintenance, pond cleaning or pond servicing in Leatherhead, Surrey KT23 and surrounding areas please contact us on (01932) 866898 or visit us on our website at www.wildewaters.co.uk

24/01/2023

Pond Maintenance: These are before and after photographs of a pond maintenance visit I did in January. The pond is close to an oak tree and I have been collecting oak leaves from this pond for at least three months now. Oak trees lose their leaves very late (as do beach trees & hedges) and will often still be dropping leaves in January. Thankfully there are no more leaves to come down but there are still a lot of leaves lying around in the garden.

When the autumn is a wet one then the leaves get wet and mostly stay close to where they fell. If the autumn is a dry one then the leaves will blow around the garden every time it is windy. We have had a cold dry winter and should there be any strong winds then more leaves are likely to end up in the pond and in the stream even though the tree is now bare. As the pond is so close to the tree there is the additional hazard of acorns falling into the stream and the pond. When I walk across the paved area close to the house there are so many acorns that I can feel them crunching under my feet.

I constructed this pond myself many years ago now. It is an informal pond with a pebble beach and a stream with a rock garden constructed using westmoreland limestone rocks.

For pond maintenance, pond cleaning or pond servicing in Guildford, Surrey GU1 and surrounding areas please contact us on (01932) 866898 or visit us on our website at www.wildewaters.co.uk

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