Building a wildlife pond
JudyN
Posts: 119
A member messaged me to ask about my pond as they are planning their own, and I thought it would be most helpful to post photos of its creation.
It was built eight years ago by a wonderful couple of landscapers who knew better than I did what I was after! It's a wildlife pond, so there's no fish. 
Bear with me, the next photo's refusing to load, I'll try in a separate post....
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I suspect it's a size problem and without a bit of fiddling I'll only be able to post portrait photos
One of the men showed me this tree stump and said 'I found it in Wareham forest and thought of you.' Not the best compliment I've had in my time!
More to follow when I've fiddled with sizes......
Last edited: 19 September 2016 10:57:43
OK, let's try again...
The wide stone is a 'viewing platform' which gets a lot of use. The first year, I spent so long kneeling on it peering over into the water I got housemaid's knee!
There are loads of nooks & crannies for wildlife, with different depths or just general dampness... can you see someone peeping out?
Last edited: 19 September 2016 13:15:40
Things I've learnt:
- If I did it again, I'd make the pond much bigger and much deeper. It's easier to create a stable ecosystem, and it seems so much smaller when the planting gets established!
- Think long and hard about what you plant in any bog area. You can't just go digging things out in a gung-ho fashion when there's a membane (even one with holes) underneath. Mine is overrun with hottuyinia which is incredibly invasive. There's a lot of common fleabane as well, and some marsh grasses that I don't think we even planted... There's still a few primulas but they're totally overwhelmed!
- Wildlife ponds tend to support either frogs or newts. I nearly fell in with the excitement of spotting our first newt, but now we get loads. Every year frogspawn and then huge numbers of tadpoles appear, but then the numbers drop and I've never seen any get as far as developing legs. I don't know if the newts eat them all or they die off for other reasons (we do have a problem with the pond collecting leaves which will decay and taint the water). But we do still see the occasional frog in the garden.
- Ideally our pond would get a bit more sun. It would definitely benefit from not being under trees, though to be fair our our whole garden is under trees! Netting it in autum & winter would help but I'm worried the dog (and possibly wildlife) would get tangled up in it.
Thanks for that Judy.
I'd certainly agree that bigger ( as is oft the case ) is better.
Don't they seem huge when you first mark them out , than about a year later you ask yourself
" why didn't I make it bigger?"
I am in the process of planning a wildlife pond. Your post was most helpful. Your pictures are extremely helpful.