Gardening with
Wildlife in Mind

Ponds and marshes

Garden ponds have made a huge contribution to the conservation of amphibians. Marshland - damp areas at the edges of ponds - can be made when ponds are constructed and is a wildlife habitat in itself.

Valuable for:

Common frogs, common toads, smooth newts, great crested newts, water beetles, dragonflies and damselflies, grass snakes and aquatic and marsh plants. Ponds with fish support fewer species of aquatic animals for the simple reason that fish eat them but toads can co-exist with fish. Orange-tip butterflies lay eggs on cuckooflower, one of many attractive native plants for pond margins or marshes. Others include marsh-marigold, water avens, yellow flag, brooklime, ragged-robin, bogbean and water-plantain.

Tips:

• Place your pond in a sunny part of the garden. Warm ponds are better for many types of wildlife such as amphibians, and dragonflies and damselflies. A pond does not have to be too deep - about 60cm is deep enough - but it should have shallow areas as well as this is where frogs will spawn.
• Even tiny ponds will support wildlife but make your pond as large as possible.
• Incorporate areas of marsh habitat as well as deeper water.
• The edges of the pond should be as saucer-like as possible.
• If you must have fish, consider having two ponds, one of them fish-free.
• Try to use British waterweeds and avoid non-native species such as swamp stonecrop or New Zealand pygmy weed Crassula helmsii (also sold as Tillea aquatica), parrot's feather Myriophyllum aquaticum and floating pennywort Hydrocotyle ranunculoides.
• Establish plenty of aquatic plants in the spring to compete with algae. Expect some blanket weed in the first year while plants are becoming established.
• Try to avoid topping up the pond with tap water - it promotes algae and some insects actually live in the draw down zone (exposed mud as the pond dries out). Instead, divert rainwater direct from the roof or top up from water butts.
• Remove weed and leaves in the autumn to avoid de-oxygenation problems.
• Only clear out one section of the pond at a time.
• Leave any vegetation you remove at the side of the pond for a day or so to give the small aquatic animals tangled up in it a chance to get back to the water.
• Surplus pond vegetation makes excellent compost.

Selected specialist publications

Bardsley, L. (2003) The Wildlife Pond Handbook. New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd
British Dragonfly Society (1996) Dig a Pond For Dragonflies. British Dragonfly Society
Natural England. (2002) Amphibians in Your Garden: Your Questions Answered.

See other garden wildlife habitats

Flowery meadows
Hedges
Walls and fences