Back in June this year we decided to build a wildlife pond in our garden. Our garden is on the smallish side for those with acres of land and on the biggish side for those with 10sq m of backyard. We enjoy playing badminton and ping pong in the garden, so we were slightly constrained in terms of size and location of the pond. That did not deter us from trying to create a small space where wildlife can stop by and rest, bath, drink and keep going. Little did we know that two months down the line we'd have been frogs, diving beetles (adults and larvae), damselflies, dragonflies and a bunch of other little animals we knew nothing about before. Pigeons stop daily to drink and bath. But first things first, how does one go about creating a pond in their backyard.
Idea 1 - The bucket
This idea started when I saw some folks on Instagram with little gatherings of water that had managed to create a small but lovely ecosystem in their garden. I wanted to try, so I told my partner I wanted to have a go at having a pond in the back garden and was prepared to make it with a bucket to start with. We discussed and agreed that a bucket doesn't have enough water in summer to sustain life with the high temperatures and would probably get fully frozen in winter so we had to go back to the drawing board.
After reading online and getting a couple of books on the topic, we landed on Idea 2.
Idea 2 - Small but proper pond
Let's dig a hole in the garden, line it and make a couple of beaches around it, so no animal can get trapped inside (there is a way out no matter what). After some online investigation and many online videos, we decided to have shelves on the sides of the pond. Adding plants would be much easier if we had a couple of different depths.
We found inspiration and a lot of information on how to approach the project in a couple of books (How to create a Wildlife Pond by Kate Bradbury and Ponds by David Kerr) and also on some websites like Pondinformer and Garden myths.
The practicalities of building a pond
We decided to go for Idea 2 and our pond area would include:
- A rain garden area
- A pond with shelves for pond plants and a small deeper area
- A bog garden next to the pond for plants that grow on top of water
- A little path separating rain garden from pond so we could walk between them and still access the back border of our garden
The sketch of the pond area:
Area where the pond will be built:
And there we ordered a skip and started excavating and getting all the lawn out and the grounds ready for the rain garden, little paths and pond.
Like many other garden projects we've done over the years, this one took a good 4 weeks to put together (in spare time of two full-time employees, so read evenings and weekends here). We didn't just excavate a lot, we also had to do a lot of shopping to get all the supplies that would get us to a finished pond.