Inspired by the latest RSPB- Home campaign to encourage wildlife into our back gardens, I decided I would take on their “Create a mini pond” project.
It’s exciting to watch pond skaters, water lice (like long-legged underwater woodlice), freshwater shrimps, and if you’re lucky, a few damselflies darting around the water. You might even see a bird having a bath.
Spring is a lovely time to create a mini-pond, because you’ll see it quickly develop over the next few months. But you can make it at any time of year.
On a recent trip to the local dump to dispose of some carpets, I spotted an old washing up bowl being thrown away, I managed to get hold of it and take it home- big bonus points for recycling. I drove to our nearest Garden Centre which has a pet store and purchased a few Oxygen Plants for the wild life pond. I chatted to a neighbour in my street who has a well-established pond and filled up 2 6-pint water bottles with the pond water.
What you will need
- A large container that will hold water
- Some gravel and rocks
- Some small pond plants
- Optional: some pond liner or silicon
After working out where to place the mini pond- not in a full day’s sun light, I dug out a hole, popped in the washing bowl, placed in some stones I found in the garden (we have 100’s of these- we have what you could call a un welcomed mini quarry in our garden L ) these stones will be used as a bank to enable frogs and other wildlife to hop in and out of the pond.
After placing the pond plants in, I filled the bowl up with the pond water- Please DO NOT USE regular tap water as this is full of chemicals that may harm the pond wildlife, if you don’t have access to a pond, use rain water.
It’s as simple as that!!
I’ll leave the pond for a few days and see who visits us…..
The last thing I did was to put my GoPro in the pond to have a sneaky look and low and behold, the pond water was full of tadpoles already and a few water boat men :0)
https://www.instagram.com/p/BSeBVTnjkEy/?taken-by=big_man_in_the_woods_
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[…] How to make a back garden Wildlife Pond […]
[…] Pigeons, Wood Pigeons, Magpies, Jay’s, Sparrows, Coal Tits, Blue Tits, Robins, Parakeets are regular visitors to our garden & once a Wood Pecker popped by for some peanuts . Before the new neighbours arrived and tidied up their garden, the previous owners let the garden over grow. It was a mess, but a haven for wildlife, particularly Mr Fox. Mr fox & his family spent many sunny afternoons soaking up the rays on our lawn. They household moved away and the new neighbours moved in and tided up the garden. Sadly, this meant that Mr Fox and his family got evicted and moved on. I know some foxes are still around as you see them diving into the bins on Bin Day trying to dig out some scraps. So, it got me thinking “Do they still visit our garden during the night ?”. I did a bit of research online and found an infa red Wildlife camera for around £50. I’ve had it up and running for a few weeks now and Grace loves to watch it back with excitement to see who has been visiting our garden at night time. We’ve seen the local cats,bats, foxes but sadly no Hedgehogs. We’ve also installed a mini wildlife pond, which I made from an old washing up bowl, let’s see what wildlife moves in there! How to make a mini wildlife pond […]