"I remember seeing a picture of one of Tim's ponds in the English Garden and at the time I thought Wow!... It's been in the back of our minds ever since.

"Why a swimming pond? For me I wanted something that looked like a pond, and I wanted lots of aquatic plants. I had also done a bit of wild swimming although not as much as I'd wanted to.

"Jon was more interested in the swimming aspect as his main reason, although we'd never considered a conventional pool, and he also liked the fact that this looks like a pond."

 "We decided to start in November 2009 - our rationale was to have the pond ready for the spring so we would get a full swimming season.

"Jose and the team had terrible weather conditions at times - first rain, then snow and ice. At one point they were stuck on the M25 for eight hours when coming down to us and luckily were able to stay over with neighbours."

Nevertheless, the pond was ready for action by the target date in March.

photo: construction, Jan 2010

 "Now we’re delighted – it’s such good fun and the water is actually warm.

"Based on a count of hot days in 2009 I reckoned we’d use the pond 14 times in 2010. Well, Daisy, my three-year-old, swam every day last summer and my 78-year-old Mum is one of its greatest fans.

"It makes you use your garden in a different way. It makes us much more likely to choose to spend the day at home rather than going out somewhere."

 "I like the fact that you don’t have to swim in it to make use of it, so we get enormous pleasure from it just sitting by it, and Daisy gets enjoyment from it just by paddling in it.

"We probably sit by it two evenings a week. We expected just to use it in the summer, but it has been a delight during all four seasons. Definitely spring, summer and autumn, and then winter if I’d not been pregnant we could have skated. It’s not just a summer thing."

photo: July 2010

 Friends and neighbours, Rosy says, are entranced, and though not all ask to swim, they love the look of the pond.

As for being in the water itself, "it feels silky. Also after the children have been in you don’t have to worry about them having a bath afterwards."

All well and good, perhaps, but would she describe it as value for money? “Look, you have to be honest and call it a luxury purchase, but new benefits are appearing all the time, and I would say it is infinitely better value than an ordinary swimming pool.”