The Pond

 I think that every garden should have some sort of water feature. A wild pond is hard to beat. As soon as we moved into our new house I dug a pond. I shall refer occasionally to the pond at our old house, because I do urge those of you who have space to make a bigger one than I have now. The old one was about 3 metres by four metres. My present one is 1 metre by 1.9 metres.

The Pond

You can see that it is not very ambitious, but I am pleased with it and it adds enormously to the wildlife garden. Here are some photos of it being made. 

Turf cut away.

It's important to get the sides level

I bought too much liner. But better than too little

Not finished, but already in use.

The New Pond

This all happened in 2017. As you can see, it was used at once by birds for bathing. Sparrows, blackbirds and starlings use it quite a lot in the summer.

The plants shown on the diagram were bought that first summer. They were all planted into aquatic compost in the bottom of the pond, not left in pots. They may move around a bit to find the depth they like, and their roots may be a useful habitat for invertebrates. The most important plants are the two oxygenators, Hornwort and Spiked milfoil. The other really important thing is the snails. We brought in a few from a large lake in a park, and there are now dozens. They help keep the water clear of algae by grazing on it every spring.

Pond snails among the Hornwort

One the irritating things about some wildlife garden writers is the way they assure readers that, if only they prepare the right habitat, wildlife will definitely arrive. Well, at our old house (nearer the city centre) a frog was sitting in the pond the day after it was filled - like the sparrows here - and palmate newts soon turned up as well. Apart from anything else they liked eating tadpoles. Here, after two years, there were no signs of any amphibians, so I imported a little frogspawn. It takes two years for frogs to reach breeding age, but in the spring of 2021 this happened.

Frogspawn

Several of the tadpoles eventually emerged as little frogs, so we hope they are the start of a successful population. 

This is January. My plan is that, as the year goes on, I shall be able to show you flowers and invertebrates and frogs. If you have room for a larger pond... Well, at the old house we had a pair of Mallard ducks mating most years (and once for a day some ducklings). We also often had a heron arrive. I once saw it eat three frogs in ten minutes, so I tried to provide a sheltered spot, under chicken wire. We do not have room for a heron here, though last summer one did perch on the garage roof and studied the problem, before deciding that our space was a bit too enclosed for a large bird.

Yesterday I removed dead leaves from the water and my fingers froze. There's a good deal of clearance work to do before the end of February (I am not planning to make a swamp) but I am hoping for slightly warmer water.