Water was the theme for Wednesday’s work party at West Beckham Old Allotments

While two volunteers headed off to Aylsham to collect a huge water butt that had kindly been donated, the rest of the work party set to work breaking ground on the new pond.

Once the water butt arrived it was soon offloaded from the trailer. We had to bail out our existing water butt to make space for the ‘beast’, which was then manhandled into place. Within no time it was chocked up on sleepers and connected up to the guttering on the shed. Alongside our existing water butts and several others that have also recently been donated, this will allow us to capture enough rainwater to keep the saplings that we will plant in November watered, as well as to top up the pond.

The pond digging team marked out the shape of the pond and then began the task of removing the turfs from the surface area. It was a long hard slog, but we achieved our goal, and even began to dig out part of the next layer. The spoil is being used to create butterfly banks which will hopefully be covered in wildflowers and butterflies in the summer.