Last updated
05 February 2012
Quest for the Good Life 
Making our own wildlife pond
With our new garden came absolutely nothing apart from grass,weeds and broken fences. Still this gives a wonderful opportunity to plan our garden, develop the wildlife areas as well as growing our own food. Part of the wildlife area includes a pond.
The pond has two functions:-
- Provide a natural area and watering hole for wildlife
- Drain excess water from the vegetable and orchard areas so they don’t become too waterlogged.
The area of the pond is about 4m diameter. Because we wanted to use our underlying clay, it’s a case of dig down. This we have done by hand with a normal garden spade.
Reading an interesting article on the net about creating a clay lined pond, there are a few pointers to remember. Don’t let the slope of the clay be more than 30% gradient. This prevents any planting medium from falling to the bottom. Don’t make the pond any deeper in the middle than 1m. Puddle the clay and make sure it is at least 15cm thick all over. This is not quite so important when clay is all around, but if you are trying to line on top of a sandy soil then you will have to ensure the clay packs in and seals otherwise you will lose all of your water.
When you dig out a pond, you will get a lot of spoil. The usual way of using this
is to mound it up around the pond, either in one large heap or several smaller ones.
In our case we have tried to place several ridges with gaps in between. These will
be planted with wildflowers to encourage wildlife, particularly bees and butterflies,
but also cover for frogs and toads.
Once the hole is dug, then you can line with the clay. We removed some then replaced it with good clay from the bottom of the hole. The day we lined it was warm and dry, so a watering can full of water helped to form the clay into a sticky mess which could be trampled into liquid mud and compressed into the sides. Once you have your clay in place, it needs to be kept damp as it will dry out and crack, allowing water to seep through.
So we have the hole dug out, the spoil heaped around the pond and the clay lining
in place. Time to fill it up with water. You can either do this naturally, if rainfall
is imminent, or from a water butt. You could use tap water if no other source is
available. Which ever way, let it fill up and test the integrity of the clay lining.
If you lose all of your water then you have a hole or holes. If the water level
stays about the same then success. If your clay has failed to hold water, you may
have to resort to buying a liner instead.
Although the pond looks very new and earthy, it will soon become refined and planted with wildflower seed mixtures for bees and butterflies and others for water margins. This will “tone” the sides and mature the pond over the coming summer months.
Note on the far side of the pond, the clay edge is built up above the water. This gives a more gentle slope out of the pond and onto the bank for frogs, toads and birds to use. On the left hand side, the inlet is a narrow channel that allows water to flow in from the vegetable garden, which tends to get wet after rain. How effective it is at draining the area? We’ll have to wait and see!
Planting up the banks
As most of the spoil has been thrown off the spade onto the side, it tends to be lumpy, hard and pretty rough going. We are not trying to get smooth sides, just soften some of the gradients and allow the banks to mellow. The rotovator comes in useful for breaking up some of the heaps ready for sowing.
Seed mixtures are available for all sorts of situations from seed merchants. There are some great mixtures at Nicky’s Nurseries.
It’s the intention to install our test Bumble Bee nest box into the bank of the pond. You can see what we are talking about here.
In addition, in our last garden we had an orchid (Marsh we think) that grew in a pot! Very strange as they need fungi to assist them in their absorption of nutrients. For the last 3 years it has flourished in an 8 inch flower pot. So that will also be installed in its rightful place.
August 2010
The warm dry summer so far has meant the banks have stayed piles of dried crumbly clay. The Thistles, Docks and Groundsel seem to flourish no matter what the conditions are like. Packets of wild flower and pond side plant seeds do not seem to have germinated. Perhaps they will.
The pond has a Lilly in it now and some Reed Mace (Bulrush) at the edge. Water cress has become established but it still looks a bowl of muddy water with some clay round it. Time will heal. I am amazed how the Pond Skaters and Water Beetles get into such a new site and prosper.
August 2011
It has been such a dry summer here in Lincolnshire (drought really) the pond has suffered the lowest water level since it was created. I took the opportunity to dig out three areas that bit deeper. Would like to have done more but getting rid of the clay lumps in the garden takes a lot of hard work.
We did half fill with the hose pipe. We now have honey bee hives and these rely on the pond for water. Still we have some really good wildlife for its second summer. Dragon flies, Damsel flies, Newts, Frogs and toads are all thriving in or around the pond.
Yes we have blanket weed but we have noticed that the honey bees visit the pond by landing either around the edges, on the mud, or on the algae. Although we clear choking amounts, a little is actually a bonus.
Although this is not a great picture, it does shows the newts that appeared in the spring. Some young ones have been seen in the early summer which suggests they were successful at breeding in the pond.
Around the pond too has been developing nicely with various flowers put into the hard clay excavations, but only the native plants seem to have been able to cope with the soil and dry weather.
The Purple Loosestrife, pictured here, has been a delight. Flowering all year long. We highly recommend this for any pond, formal or informal as it is beautiful. We plan to grow a whole swathe of this for colour, wildlife and our bees.
Our Reed Mace (sometimes called Bullrush) has spread, as only they can, although no flowers this year we have had to control the runners. Even so the Dragonflies have enjoyed their leaves and stems to rest on.
So as we head in to autumn, the pond looks even more untidy with bits of grass stems, leaves and old flowering heads turning brown. We will only clear some of the leaves from the water, some of the grass and some of the heads, leaving the rest for the insects and birds to shelter in and eat from.
We are already thinking of how to improve the wildlife pond for 2012.