THE WATER-GARDEN 265 
your pond with pains, and don’t rest content with a 
mere circle or oval, like the bed of some great pie or 
pudding. Excavate, then, to four feet and a half at one 
end—for I advise a kidney-shape, with many variants, as 
the best general design for the pond—and at the lower 
end have a lesser depth—say about three feet to three 
feet and a half. For remember that this is not your 
depth as you will have it, since the concrete bottom will 
swallow up at least six inches if you wish to be quite safe 
against any possible shiftings, frosts, and other disasters. 
This, with a superimposed six inches of soil, will leave you, 
at your deepest, three feet and a half of water at the 
deeper end, and two and a half at the shallower. If you 
delve any deeper, you may have too much water for some 
of the frailer Nymphaeas ; if you spare trouble and make 
your pond shallower, you run the risk, in hard winters, 
of having the pond frozen solid, so that the cement, 
unable to contain the expanded mass, cracks and bursts. 
You will add a notable advantage and beauty if you 
give the pond a false wall. That is to say, make it a 
solid tank of cement, with four sides and bottom, quite 
simple. Then, in brick, build an inner wall, rising to 
within an inch or so of water-level. If the narrow trench 
thus formed—it need not be more than eight inches wide 
—be filled with rich soil on a rubble base of two feet or 
so, it will give you a most lovely ring of bog-plants round 
your lake, being perpetually wet with the water that just 
overtaps the false inner wall, and for ever percolates into 
the soil. There is, of course, no need to have this all 
round, if you do not want it, but one of the loveliest 
pools I know sits high on a Surrey down, and owes half 
its beauty to its complete girdle of Iris, Spiraea, and fen- 
plants generally. 
Again, nothing looks better than to diversify your 
bank here and there with some bold feature. Here and 
