Tell me your pond mistakes.

[Slightlydustcovered]

Inspired by older DIY threads I am just about to install a pond in my garden. No fish purely for wildlife. What mistakes did you make? I really want to get it right first time. Thanks all

I think underestimating how much digging would be involved and what to do with all the dirt. It started off smallish and then I watched a GW episode that said it needed to be deep enough to support wildlife at the bottom half in winter when the top part froze. In going deeper I had to go wider. I also found liners to be a minefield, there is so much choice and some are very expensive. Some people suggested to me using clay, other people suggested old carpets. I had no idea how to do clay and didn't think I could do it properly so I decided sourcing old carpet would be easier. By this point I'm starting to regret putting in a pond. Once it was all built and ready for planting there was a hot spell and the water mostly disappeared over night. I worried there was a leak but couldn't figure out where or if the water was evaporating very rapidly or if that was even possible. I've realised I need to keep one or two large water butts specifically designated for the pond when it needs refilling. I think overall it's been more work than I had expected but then I'm on my own and don't know if I've done it all properly.

Good luck OP! I love all the wildlife the pond has brought but it wasn't the fun project I had thought it would be. Not sure I would do it again.

Don't build your pond too close to a hedge. Balancing along the edge of the pond (in our case raised above the ground) while wielding hedge clippers trying to stop hawthorn clippings dropping into the water, is not fun. Neither is the alternative of spending half a day assembling a platform and cover over the pond for while you are hedge cutting, then disassembling it after.

Choose the smallest waterlilies you can find. They will grow beyond your wildest anticipation.

Don't put it under a tree as all the leaves will be bad for the water quality when they rot. Also don't put it in direct sunlight all the time as you'll get green algae and lack of oxygen.

Have gentle sides so animals can get in/out and a range of water plants

We introduced duckweed presumably by carelessly bringing in newts or something from another pond -- my life would be superior without duckweed in the darn pond. I did rescue a lot of critters when neighbours filled in their pond - glad I did that.

It's easy to puncture the liner so try not to do that :).

We put in a bag of Watercress from Tesco, its spreading very quickly. They have lovely white flowers atm. I wish I'd only put a little bit in first

Ours is tiny but we love it and have tadpoles, frogs, damsel flies etc. Birds and hedgehogs drink at it. We have learned:
Dont place it under a tree as leaves will foul it.
Have a pump to keep the water fresh.
Keep rain water butts for topping up, or we have a big container which we put tap water in but let stand for several days before using it.
Put pond snails in. They are like tiny hoovers.
It needs shade when the weather is hot. We stick a big golf umbrella in ours in very hot weather to keep the water cool.

These are are very useful as I'm thinking about a pond too!

Don't poke it with a sharp stick to crack the ice.
Second the water lilies comment.
Managed 30 years without duckweed but this year it's full of it.
Newts eat tadpoles.

Duck weed. Oh my! Fortunately we now have visiting wild ducks and so they’re eating a lot of it.

Don’t underestimate how many plants you will need. They’re not cheap.

Don’t underestimate how tricky the levelling can be. Our pond ended up a fair bit bigger than we anticipated because we had to keep expanding it to get the levels right.

My pond is a wildlife pond too but you can still have fish. We have sticklebacks.

Ramps and plants for hedgehogs and other wildlife to climb out when they fall in.

Tall reed type plant for dragonflies and damselflies.

Lots of oxygenator plants so you don't get loads of blanket weed.

Be careful in what you plant, a Reed we planted was supposed to be non invasive
Ours is a wildlife pond and used a special clay type liner - bloody brilliant

We got a floating plant pot - it's brilliant. it's got a plant in that dragonflies like. It bobs about the pond and acts like a little raft for the froglets.

Mistakes - we didn't work out what plants to go round the edge so I still have a thick border of black plastic and no idea of what to grow to cover it.

It is a great thing to have in your garden.

I have creeping Jenny and water forget me not around mine. Probably need to cut them back at some point, they're spreading like mad!

Amazing thanks all. So far I need sloping sides, part sun part shade not under a tree or that stops access to anything. I need to talk my husband in to helping me share the digging and we need a new raised bed to re-home the soil. Lots of plants with good variety and to think about how I edge the sides.

This is incredibly helpful I have just ordered a liner planning to start this weekend! I am now very excited.

Ooh I can contribute!!

We initially dug a pond that was in shade almost all the day. The “shade loving” pond plants I didn’t buy didn’t at all thrive.

Then winter came, and it became horribly obvious that the actually quite shallow pond had the bottom of it below the waterline. This meant that when it heavily rained, water would come up underneath the liner and it would balloon, and water would be pushed out.

It was a horrible disaster.

We redug it somewhere where it gets sun at least half the day, and used a solid liner. In retrospect even now I would do a barrel pond.

BUT we now have loads of tiny bugs in there, it’s a magnet for birds, have seen some beautiful dragon flies. No frogs but it might be a bit small for that.

Sorry the shade loving plants I DID buy actually didn’t like the pond position. They are all happily flowering and growing beautifully now.

Don't have completely sloping sides, you need different levels of horizontal 'shelves' too to put plants on. And make sure you check that your shelves at the side are big enough for the pots. There are only a few places where mine are wide enough, so all the pretty marginal plants are on one side and the other side they kept falling off and drowning.

Have a nice shallow area at one end - the birds love to bathe in it.

I love our pond, I dug it out three years ago and now it's heaving with newts, frogs and damselflies despite being only 2x1m.

We found a premade 100l round pond on eBay locally for a fiver. It’s super. Have frogs, tadpoles, snails, water beetles and all sorts living in it.

We have a solar fountain to move the water so it doesn’t stagnate.

Ours gets too much light so we do have an algae issue, recently planted some taller plants and need to get some more water plants.

I didn’t anticipate needing to build up one side with pots / large pebbles so the hedgehog can climb out.

If you’ve got kids I can highly recommend buying a seascope to look underwater at all the goings on.

If you have any quiet corners in your garden you could make a tiny experimental pond to start with just to see if you enjoy making it and having it. Making a big pond from scratch is a lot of work. You could try taking a bucket or an old sink, using anything solid and preformed then digging that into the ground. Fill it with clean gravel at the bottom, then buckets of water from a neighbour’s pond plus your rain water that you’ve collected. Wait. You’ll have minimal set up and maintenance to do that way and still be making a contribution to local wildlife habitats for diversity. It’s an easy way to still have an opportunity to see what wildlife will show up and to observe the seasons in the pond which for me is the most fun part of it.

www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/maintain-the-garden/how-to-create-a-wildlife-garden-part-one/

Not sure if you've seen this OP, there's about 10 or so short videos here. I found these helpful when I was creating my pond. Lots of good planting ideas too.

my life would be superior without duckweed in the darn pond. My trouble with duckweed is that when you scoop it off you find it's full of tadpoles and you have to put most of it back again.

And if you don't scoop it up, the sun can't get to the pond, the water stays cold, and your tadpoles don't thrive.

I still have a thick border of black plastic and no idea of what to grow to cover it. Cover it with pebbles to hide it, and let plants flop over it. Our frogs love alpine strawberries.

We scooped duckweed out in February this year, this reduced it for a while, at least.

Mine is a wildlife pond. It's roughly a teardrop shape. The pointy end and sides have a shelf and the wider end slopes up to a pebbly beach. Our garden is on a seam of ironstone so lots of huge rocks were excavated and the used soil went to one side with a little wall and is a rockery.
I started with frogs and they came back for 20 years but recently the newts have won.

I fished out a load of duckweed and other weed lady week. It's all piled up on the side while the creatures get out.