Here’s a little update on our small wildlife pond, suggested by Avril who left a lovely comment on my post about building the pond - thank you Avril and to the others who left comments on that post.

We built the pond in March-April 2020 so it’s now going into its fourth year (you can read the post about building it here). It’s been a great addition to our garden, and I love visiting to observe the wildlife activity or to do a bit of weeding nearby. I also love that I can see it from the house. Often I’ll just take a few seconds to look at it through the window, to see raindrops hitting the water or a blackbird having a bath.

Wildlife

One of the best things about the pond (and the reason for building it in the first place) is the wildlife, and it didn’t take long for the insects and animals to arrive. We started seeing insects in and around the new pond within the first few months and birds visited to drink and bathe in the water. Frog spawn appeared for the first time in early March 2022 and we had more spawn this year, appearing in late February. This year’s tadpoles hatched almost exactly four weeks later and they’re doing really well with plenty of algae to eat - there’s a video of them below, wriggling in the water. So far we’ve not spotted any newts which seem to prefer our larger, more established pond.

Plants

I think we may have lost the pennyroyal plant in the extreme cold we had this past winter, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed it survived and is just slow to send out shoots this spring. There’s also no sign of any water forget-me-not which I was expecting to see by now. But the iris and water lily are both doing fine and the water plantain formed a second plant last year. I’m looking forward to flowers from them this summer. In the flowerbeds and paths, I’m leaving some self-seeding plants - like oregano, aquilegia, foxgloves and primroses - to naturalise in the area and soften the rocky edges of the pond.

Maintenance

Each year I remove a fair amount of leaf material from the pond - that’s the consequence of building it so close to a beech hedge and a magnolia tree and also choosing not to cover the pond with a net. I don’t mind some leaves but I don’t want huge quantities building up at the bottom as it’s a rather small pond. The water level’s gotten a bit low during the dry spells we have in summertime and if I get concerned I’ll add some of the rainwater I’ve collected over the winter, but I’ve not had to top it up very often. Despite my best attempts to keep duckweed out of the pond, it somehow got in and quickly covered the surface last year so now I need to regularly skim the water to keep it under control. The pond itself hasn’t need much maintenance other than that!

Have you build a wildlife pond recently? I’d love to hear about your experiences - let me know in the comments if you’d like to share. Thanks for stopping by and reading!