My Plot A natural swimming pool in the garden
SARAH AND WILL MURCH DREAMT OF WILD SWIMMING IN THEIR GARDEN. SO THEY TURNED A DISUSED PATCH INTO A TRANQUIL POOL, NOW A HAVEN FOR WILDLIFE AS WELL AS THEIR FAMILY
The story so far
Ten years ago, we were a family of seven, crammed into a three-bedroom house. We needed to move but had to stay local for Will’s business. When this plot came up, we literally went down the hill and moved in. The building was horrendous – it had been an institution for young offenders. It was all fire doors, locking systems and boxed-off rooms. The land surrounding it was a neglected field – it was pretty depressing. For two years we did very little apart from cutting it back, strimming it down and riding bikes and horses over it. It was only once we decided to put the pool in that I came up with a masterplan for the whole garden.
More than a pool
Creating a natural pool isn’t as simple as digging a hole in the ground, there is a strict recipe: half the surface area is for swimming and the rest is for regeneration and plants. These areas filter and purify the water, and the plants are specifically chosen to draw out phosphates from the water. When we arrived, the garden was a wild place and I didn’t want to tame it. I’ve made it ultra-naturalistic with wild flowers growing among grasses – and that makes it unique. The pretty plants around the pool provide food for pollinators, and the lilies don’t have much function apart from being somewhere for frogs to sit and newts to lurk beneath. »
Simple pleasures
Every time I visit the pool, I am blown away by its magic; it always surprises me. It doesn’t matter if it’s a dull day, windy or sunny – it is always beautiful and every time I swim, I am gobsmacked that we built this. The wildlife that is drawn to the garden is a big thing for me. Sitting by the water and seeing the swallows dip and the dragonflies hover is pretty amazing. It is also the place we all come together as a family – we are all drawn to the water. It is where we gravitate, it calms and revitalises, and not just when swimming in it but also by being beside it. It is a very special place.
My biggest achievement
I am so proud of the pool, it was the first one we ever built. I love the borders that surround it. The grasses and seed heads provide so much for wildlife. When I weed, I come across voles, snakes and bumble bees. In winter, the goldfinches flit around eating the seed heads, the wind tickles all the grasses without knocking them flat. In spring the beauty of the iris and scent of water mint both bring so much joy...
“We are all drawn to the water. It is where we gravitate, it calms and revitalises and not just when swimming in it but when sitting beside it”
When it goes wrong
Initially, we planned to have a diving board and attempted to dig 3m deep. We were going to have a green-oak, sprung diving-board and everyone was very excited about it. When we started digging, though, we hit ground water at 2.75m. It poured in and the sides started collapsing – it was a nightmare. We had to get rid of the ground water, which was quite scary as there was a danger of the sides collapsing. We didn’t make it to 3m, so the diving board had to go. It was a huge lesson.
What I have learnt
As well as learning from pool-building mistakes, I had to learn from the planting mistakes, too. When we began, I didn’t know much about reed beds. I planted pretty looking reeds around the edges in the clay shell, but two years later, the whole pool was full of it – it had taken over. It was natural and wild, but we lost plants like the iris. I’ve spent the past four years trying to get rid of it and, in the process, have learnt about how water plants grow and spread, and how they have to be curtailed. I now create wider marginal shelves in the pools we build.
My advice...
…weigh up the cost versus maintenance. You can dig a hole, shape a regeneration zone, put in a liner and have minimal filtration. But you will always be fighting a natural system, cleaning out gunk and biofilm you get from phosphates that swimmers bring in. Our pools are designed for easy, low maintenance, which means less work in the long-term. That’s the thing with water, when it goes wrong, it can take a long time to rebalance a pool.