Designing garden ponds for wildlife
Clean water is key
Really clean water is essential for making great
wildlife ponds. For most people rainwater is the
best as tap water often has high nutrient levels.
Most garden ponds need a liner - but don’t add soil
or upside down turves to your pond to root plants,
because turves have high levels of nutrients that will
pollute the pond. Put a layer of fine washed gravel
or clean sand (we use the sand for children’s sandpits)
on the bottom. If you are adding aquatic plants in
pots fill these with a sand/gravel mix, not compost
to avoid adding nutrients.
Make natural edges with
really shallow water
The greatest variety of animals and plants live in very
shallow water at the edges of the pond – not in the
middle. So the best wildlife ponds have very gently
shelving natural edges, often fringed by grasses.
To make good habitat for, tadpoles, newt larvae,
water beetles and dragonflies make areas of water
no more than 2-3 cm deep (an inch or so).
Unless you’re keeping big fish, the deepest areas
need to be no more than 25-30 cm (1 foot). Most
pond guides say dig ponds 60-70 cm deep to ‘stop
them freezing solid’ but in Britain there’s no need
A perfect garden wildlife pond
Shallow water, a natural sandy bottom,
grassy edges and full of plants
to do this because we only ever get an inch or two
of ice on the water even in the coldest weather.
Let wildlife come to
your pond naturally
Don’t add sludge to your pond to ‘get it started’
– over millions of years pond animals have evolved
ways of finding new ponds. In the spring small
animals will be arriving within minutes and you
might see animals such as water beetles and
dragonflies come to your new pond in just a
couple of days. Even plants can turn up on their
own though they are usually slower. Amphibians
will usually arrive in a year or two.