I made the pond in early Spring and, by late Summer it was looking very natural. It attracted lots of frogs and frogspawn in the second Spring. Friends gave me pond mud and some plants to kick-start it with pond life. The frogs arrived themselves as it was always a wet site. We have 'wildlife corridors' of unkempt grass leading to the pond but keep a path around it mowed. It is lined with old carpets then butyl to stop leaks. At the deep end it goes down to around four feet. The shallow end allows creatures to clamber out, including the frogs. It naturalised after a couple of weeks and I then added a bag of organic compost which helped the plants to grow and gave it a nice, mysterious darkness. The addition of gnomes made it a great feature for the wildlife-friendly garden. The kids like it and are old enough to clamber out should they fall in. All in all a fantastic project which I love.I read that the frogs will eat lots of slugs at night so I hope that is happening. The pond is sited near the raised veg beds.
Updates: I have now made a bench beside the pond out of old pallets and it is great to watch the insect life and frogs staring back at me. It is truly wonderful to watch the clouds passing over, reflected in the water with pond skaters waltzing over the surface. Giant water snails have appeared (from the pond plants and mud which I added). Last Spring we counted over 20 adult frogs peering out and we had frog spawn and tadpoles. We could hear them croaking at night - very eerie. Not many of the tadpoles seem to survive though. Not sure what eats them. There is plenty of cover from the weeds so hopefully some make it. We don't have any fish as they eat too many of the residents..
If you decide to build one, even an old sink will quickly become a living pond if you add a couple of pond weeds and some pond water to kick-start it. I had to wait for the kids to get old enough before I dug our one but it's the best feature of the garden...
Here's the RHS Guide: http://www.wildaboutgardens.org.uk/thingstodo/inaweekend/put-in-a-pond.aspx
Frogs Arrive!
3 March 2010. Loads of frogs and spawn appear in pond. Same day as in 1969 back in Hornchurch, Essex.
Plenty of tadpoles now as the spawn has hatched. We saw a big water beetle amongst them, hopefully not eating them. It looked like a sea turtle, as it rowed through the tadpoles.
ReplyDeleteThe water looks a bit murky but has been topped up by heavy rain so waiting for it to recover from the ice which might have poisoned the water with trapped gas.