Why a Pond Is the Best Thing You Can Add to a Country Garden

Few features repay the effort quite like a pond. Within weeks of filling one, you will notice frogs arriving at dusk, dragonflies patrolling the surface and blackbirds queuing up on the margin for a bath. For anyone living rurally, with a smallholding, paddock or just a generous garden, a pond is the single most effective way to bring wildlife in close. It does not need to be large or expensive. A shallow, plant-filled hollow roughly the size of a dining table will support more species than a manicured lawn ten times the area. The key is to build it with wildlife in mind rather than for ornament alone, which means gently sloping sides, native planting and absolutely no fish.

Choosing the Right Spot

Position matters more than size. Aim for a spot that receives sun for at least half the day, because warmth drives the insect life that everything else feeds on, but avoid full sun all day or the water will overheat and turn green. Some afternoon shade from a hedge or small tree is ideal. Keep the pond away from large trees, partly to spare yourself the autumn leaf-fall and partly because roots can puncture a liner, but a few overhanging branches provide cover for emerging dragonflies and a hunting perch for herons and kingfishers.

If you keep livestock, fence the pond off from grazing animals. Cattle and horses will trample the margins, foul the water and destroy the very habitat you are creating, and a pond in a paddock can also be a poaching risk. A simple post-and-rail or stock fence set a metre back from the edge protects both the pond and your animals.

Digging and Lining

Mark out an irregular shape, avoiding perfect circles and rectangles, which look contrived and offer less edge habitat. Then dig with three zones in mind:

• Marginal shelf: 20–30cm deep and at least 30cm wide around most of the perimeter, where bog and marginal plants will grow.
• Slope: a gentle gradient from the shelf down to the deepest point, giving amphibians an easy route in and out. Never leave vertical sides.
• Deep zone: 60–90cm in the centre. This is where frogs and newts overwinter and where the water stays cool in summer.

Line the hollow with a good butyl or flexible EPDM liner, underlaid with old carpet, sand or a purpose-made fleece to protect it from stones and roots. Work the liner into the contours, allow plenty of slack, and tuck the edges into a shallow trench before backfilling with soil and turf. If you are on heavy clay, you may be able to puddle the base naturally, but a liner is more reliable and far less heartbreaking.

Filling and Planting with Natives

Fill from a water butt or hose, then let the water settle for a week or two before planting. Rainwater is best; tap water contains nutrients and phosphates that encourage algae. If you must use tap water, let it stand in the pond for a fortnight before adding plants.

Plant in baskets of loam-based compost, topped with gravel to stop fish—there are none—and birds from scattering it. Good native choices include:

• Marginals: marsh marigold, water forget-me-not, purple loosestrife, ragged robin and lesser spearwort.
• Submerged oxygenators: hornwort and water starwort, which keep the water clear and provide cover for tadpoles.
• Floating: a single water lily, ideally a native white one, plus a little frogbit.
• Edges: lady's smock, yellow flag iris and soft rush to blur the transition between water and land.

Avoid invasive non-natives such as Australian swamp stonecrop and parrot's feather, which will smother everything and are a nightmare to remove. Cover roughly a third of the surface with floating leaves to shade out algae, but leave open water for dragonflies and bathing birds.

Creating a Wildlife-Friendly Margin

The water is only half the habitat. A mosaic of long grass, log piles and stones around the edge gives amphibians somewhere to hide and hunt. Leave a strip of rough grass uncut, pile up a few logs in a shady corner, and place a flat stone or two at the water's edge as basking spots for dragonflies and frogs. A shallow pebble beach at one end lets birds and hedgehogs drink and bathe safely, and gives emerging froglets a gentle exit. If you have space, a small bog garden fed by the pond's overflow will add damp-loving plants such as meadowsweet and marsh woundwort.

Managing the Pond Through the Year

Wildlife ponds need surprisingly little maintenance, and too much tidying does more harm than good. A few simple jobs will keep it healthy:

• Top up in dry spells with rainwater, never tap water where you can avoid it.
• Thin oxygenators in late summer if they cover more than half the water.
• Remove fallen leaves with a net before they sink and rot.
• Cut back dead marginal growth in early spring, leaving the cuttings on the bank for a day so creatures can crawl back.
• Never introduce fish, and resist the urge to "clean" the pond—the murky phase in the first year is normal and settles as plants establish.

Within a season you should have frogs, possibly newts, and a host of insects. Within two, damselflies and dragonflies will find you. Sit quietly at dusk with a mug of tea and you will wonder why you waited so long.