Update - I know you've all been hanging on the edges of your seats
Nearly there. The pond surround is now complete and looks like a cross between Stonehenge and a Graeco-Roman ruin. The stone otter and stone frog (OH, not me) sort of soften the image a little. One iris now sits in the shallows. Others to come. Today, we inoculated the water with a bucketful of sludgey liquid from the bottom pond, after suitably sieving it so that we didn't accidentally take any tadpoles (which wouldn't survive in the new pond yet - but oh, how they giggled at being poured from one container to another!). But the water beetles are still there, now joined by a water boatman and, after the inoculation, a population of mini-wiggley-things. The blackbirds have already discovered how the Stonehenge end works, running wild amongst the archways (which are actually access points for frogs, hedgehogs, etc.).
So the animals seem to like it. Just no frogs. I think I may do a couple of forced introductions over the next few days - just as soon as I find where they're hiding this time.
Mike