In the middle of my garden are three large raised beds, neighbours have said they used to be large fish ponds before the previous occupant aged and turned their use to less strenuous planting. Consequently, frogs and toads frequently emerge from seemingly no where to fulfil their reproductive urges in the ponds which no longer exist. Their migratory instinct is strong, and the frog and the humble toad can live as long as 40 years! So, imagine how sad I was, when during the first spring in our new home all these hundreds of frogs and toads turned up in our garden. They popped out of drains, through bars that really looked too small to fit them, sometimes already grasped in their lovers embrace searching with futility to find water in which to deposit their precious cargo... in our bone dry garden...
When ever I saw them, I tossed them gently into our neighbours garden pond hoping that I'd caught the vast majority and given them a second chance. Imagine my surprise when, upon doing some tidying during the heat wave in May, I found a small dog bowl (left our from last summer) pushed back into the corner... containing frog spawn, a very tiny amount of water and a female frog looking a lot less wet than it should be. Evidently this poor girl was one I'd missed, but she'd tried to make the best of bad situation. I quickly tossed it into the neighbours pond and dunked the frog spawn, dog bowl and all into an old fish tank which I filled with rain water. Sadly, I must have found the frog spawn a little too late as the little black dots polarised, much to my dismay...
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| Shortly after digging and filling the pond. |
Now, determined, I declared to my other half that we must have a pond... a wildlife pond, all for the amphibians which evidently are missing a water source in our garden. He looked at me strangely, protested a little on the grounds that the dogs will sit in it and then conceded that the trickle of water on a warm summers eve would be quite nice after all (see how I sold it?!).
A couple of months later we've now purchased a second hand preformed plastic liner, a waterfall feature and a pump for £80, dug the hole, fitted the pond, and filled it with rain water.
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| We finalised the water fall placement. |
I found my first frog in it yesterday whilst positioning the waterfall feature, and I've already counted two species of damselfly (over 10 separate pairs of large red, and a couple of blue tailed), I've also found a nymphs casing left on a rock by the side of the pond (must have been amongst the pond vegetation that my neighbour donated).
Rather than filling the gap underneath the water fall with solid soil, after putting the supporting rocks around the edge, we have in filled the space underneath with some of last years left over firewood logs and some of the turf and soil we removed from the border of the pond. Hopefully amphibians and bugs and beasties can have a kind of cubby hole to hide in.
Now it's almost finished, we only have some cobbles and plants to place and a bog garden to excavate on the left hand side of the waterfall... What do you think so far?
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| It's not quite finished, but we're getting close. We've got to dig the bog garden bit to the left of the waterfall, put some plants around the edge and some lovely cobbles we've got waiting to finish it off... Can't wait until next year when it's matured and weathered in a bit! |
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| Can you spot the damselflies? Ten pairs turned up within 10 minutes of filling the pond up and putting in vegetation. |
