Help me plan a very unusual blank canvas

[AlanThePig]

Hi all,
Firstly, I must state I'm no gardener. I've never had a useable garden before so this is all a bit new to me.

We bought this house in August last year after falling in love with its unusual feature. The house has spent many years as a rental so people have mowed the lawn and that's that. Very little has actually been done to introduce any colour in here at all.

I know we have a huge expanse of beautiful pink water lilies as they were open when we moved in, but other than that there is no colour.

Around the banks are reeds and grasses which we will keep for the wildlife (we have ducks that spend a lot of time in there).

I've used google maps. The key is as follows:

Pink outline is our front garden. We have a small patch to the left of the picture where it doglegs back. I'd planned to let this small patch grow wildflowers and plant some lavender type plants there for the bees.

Red circle is a huge, beautiful willow tree.

green is a small tree, not even sure what it is, and to be perfectly honest I only actually noticed it a few weeks ago

blue is a newt habitat. We were told the pond was protected for great crested newts and this habitat, which is section of rockery like boulders, was put there when the house was built to compensate. Local council however have no record of this. Either way, we do have newts (not great crested that I've seen) so this needs to stay for them.

My brief is I want colour! There are going a row of hawthorn bushes in the top middle as we have had the odd issue with kids sneaking through the fence but other than that it's a totally blank canvas and I have zero idea where to start.

Suggestions desperately needed on what to plant, where and when!

I've noticed something growing under the willow, I'll go take a photo.....

ok, aside from grasses of which there seems to be a fair bit, this is what I've discovered walking up to the willow:

more...something looks like its appearing in the bank

Oh it sounds lovely!

Yes your rodas will love it - just right!

Is the yellow flower celandine?

I think so Later also known as a 'bog buttercup' according to Google.

Opened the curtains to find a pair of geese this morning. Not sure if they are staying or just passing through but thats another 2 mouths to feed 😂

so, your first 3 pics, those are water lily leaves in the pond, I think, (the dark coloured leaves) but it seems a bit early, so may be wrong.

The big clump with green spiky shoots, pretty sure that is a clump of iris.

The dead twigs are probably going to be reeds of some sort, and probably where the ducks etc nest, right in the middle

Well, wetlands guy has just gone, I'm now sat in my PJ's as we got totally soaked! Fascinating afternoon though.

steppenmum you are correct on both counts, those are water lilies and iris.
We've been advised to leave the grasses as that will suit the newts, we've also discovered evidence of water voles or shrews today, not sure which but one to keep an eye on. Planting iris up the far end will assist the newts if we can pop in some more rocks to give them a little more of a shallow area.
Also pulled out no end of dragonfly larvae, mussels (!?) , water boatmen and newts. No great crested that we've found yet, but there is a breeding site a few hundred yards up the road so still very possible they are here.

He also has no record of the pond being protected, and no idea who built the newt habitat but it is indeed a very large, very fancy habitat clearly built by an expert. He's as baffled as me! I've been asked to thoroughly photograph any newt we find.

His advice really was 'try not to touch'. We discussed leaving the area by the fence where the newt habitat is longer so it aids the wildlife there, so we'll only mow around the banks. Grasses will be left etc and I think any colour is going to be best in containers for now. He's going to send me some plant species that newts love as well so thats a bit more to think about. Oh and if we could get rid of the fish that would be great haha (impossible)

Thank you all again for your help with this. I shall update as I go (slowly)

Oh amazing, how wonderful to have an expert on the doorstep.

You need a friendly heron I think

You could concentrate on the area at the front left of your original pics, the dog leg, you could have a nice colourful little sitting space there, from which you can watch the wildlife.
Grow a clematis up the wall/fence behind, and then have a few containers full of summer bedding etc. You could even have a tomato/runner bean etc in a pot or two. Only problem with containers is watering when you are on holiday

and about those fish....

we have a small pond, really small, just 2m x 1 m, but a reasonable depth. When we moved in there were no fish (apparently) we added about 3 goldfish. Heron came and ate them.

Then, as there were no fish, and as there was nowhere to stand plants, we took everything out, and drained the water down to about 3 inches on the bottom. (and kept it to one side) We cleaned out about 18 inches of dead leaves, and put in a couple of planks on bricks to support plants. In the process I dragged the bottom with a net to get out the leaves. It was empty, I swear 100% empty. (well, apart form lots of wriggly things which we obviously put back.

We refilled it, putting all the water back in through a seive, to get out the leaves, and repotted/sorted the plants and added some new ones etc.

so there was 3 inches of water in the bottom of a sloping sided pond, so only an area of about 1m x 6 inches at that depth, and I seived all that water.

When we refilled it, we had 3 large black goldfish.

They are still there, they now have alot of children.
Impossible to get rid of goldfish, they are like houdini

The little corner behind the willow was my chosen spot last year. The fences either side are high and the willow offers screening, it was a lovely place to sit and we did say we'd put a stone circle or something down there with a couple of loungers to just watch life go by.

Ds can come and water whilst we're away (not planned anything yet though) so thats not a problem.
Clematis is a good idea. I'd also thought of growing some sweet peas up the hedgerow to the right.

I think this year dusty has it right, observe and do very little other than maintain. I shall have have some pots and maybe concentrate on the back garden which is another totally blank canvas.

We do have a heron btw, he's usually pretty successful 😁

I managed to find a copy of all of the planning documents for the estate, fascinating stuff and contains all the letters, drawings and discussion over the site. Amongst the 290 pages was some correspondence with the local Wildlife Trust.

It transpires that the land to the side of the house used to have a part demolished outbuilding. When they were surveying the site they found a large number of smooth newts living in the remains of the rocks. Wildlife trust came out and did a survey, concluding that whilst there were no great crested newts the existing smooth newt population needed protection. With that they recommended the builder create a similar habitat to the demolished shed, hence the construction of the rockery area at the side of the pond.

There was some discussion on the pond belonging to the street, eventually it was decided to put it in with our house as there were concerns it wouldn't be maintained if left public land.

Also interesting to see there was originally a covenant on the house that stated the front area along the fence line was not to be mowed until September when it should be cut back only once to allow the newt population to benefit from the long grasses. Looks like somewhere between then and now that covenant got lost. Funnily enough I spoke to a lovely guy from The Wetlands Trust last week who advised me exactly the same - don't cut that area, so we'd already decided to leave it long when we found the covenant.

Lots of questions answered!

Fantastic update, that's great - finding freshwater mussels was a surprise, I bet. So you have your very own wildlife reserve!