I Turned a Boring Patch of my Garden into a Wildlife Pond!
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- Опубликовано: 27 окт 2023
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I built a small pond in my garden recently. In the first week it was filled with Boatman, nymphs and water beetles and am planning to introduce lots of floating plants and wildflowers. It cost £15 but the overall the satisfaction in the end makes it a bargain.
Cool and you're spot on about the satisfaction, its amazing how fast life seems to just arrive on the water!
Under the mound of soil next to the pond would be a good spot to build a hibernaculum for newts and frogs to overwinter. Great little wildlife pond though, really surprising what turns up over time. It really cannot be understated how important building wildlife ponds like this is right now, a sobering statistic is that according to the Wildlife Trust in the UK we have lost half a million ponds in the last century. Having a patchwork of ponds across the landscape so wildlife can migrate is so important to prevent species becoming cut off and isolated, helps to increase resilience against localised extinction.
Thats a cool idea actually. Its easy to feel demoralised with statistics like that, but I take enjoyment and hope in doing what I can!
@@LeaveCurious @fire2burn it is a lot lost but also so many opportunities for a similar number to be easily replaced if most backyards included a pond
This has got to be the best youtube channel in Britain. These videos just keep getting better
Theres of course many great British creators, but I certainly appreciate your praise - thank you!
Another great wildlife enthusiast on RUclips is Joel Ashton from Wild your garden 😉
I love how frogs and newts just magically appear wherever there is a wet area. Like how did you get here, little frog?
My grandparents have 2 ponds and a connected wet area… it’s 30-40 years old now , build as water retention ponds to water the garden in the summer ,and rll great. there are fish in there, dragonflies flying overhead, frogs, snakes and many wild birds are there. We also use it to swim inside in the summer, although the water is rather brown and muddy, it’s still refreshing and a nice thing to do.
And nope, my brain was not yet eaten my brain eating amoeba:)
So, I can only say PONDS ARE AWESOME
Woah sounds epic. Swimming in that would certainly re-connect you with nature!
Hmmmmm, '' my brain was not yet eaten my brain''. Anyway that all sounds amazing, it must have been magnificent. ( The ponds and all that, not the brain eating part. )
I built a similar pond earlier this year, and within two days we had a resident frog who has been there ever since, no idea where he came from as none of our neighbours have ponds. It makes me smile whenever I think about it :) The amount of diverse wildlife that I have seen in and around the pond has been incredible!
Ahhh this is so similar to my first little pond. I was like hello! Where did you come from!?
I did a similar thing back in the 80's. Before long I had crested newts, frogs, boatmen, beetles, snails, I put in a few goldfish and orfe and they lived happily for years.
I did something very similar almost 19 years ago here in Japan and the pond is still going. I introduced some shrimps and pond snails that are found locally and they are still thriving, although fish and some insects did not do quite as well. I may have another try in the future. Dragonflies breed regularly, and this year, I even found a species that I had never seen before.
Hot sunny summers are a problem and I often have to manually fill it up as the water evaporates very quickly.
And it is also interesting to see what other wildlife live around the pond.
Ok so my pond did evaporate. I’d love to get some pond snails in! I can’t wait to see what naturally comes
If you want dragonflies then don’t get fish, main food source is the nymphs !
I have a small ornamental pond, came with the house. But we have to keep it covered (with a net) as we’ve had a hedgehog and a bird drown in it. Newts and pond snails mostly live there as well as a couple of pond plants. I also have an old plastic trough filled with stones that the birds use to drink and bath in, another stone ‘feature’ where animals drink from. The plan this winter is to dig a three/four pond system for a deeper one for fish, more shallow ones for frogs/newts and a bog for certain plants and other critters.
I've got a old spa bath that I have dug into the garden with a variety of plants a white lily and a log sticking out of it so wildlife can climb out of it i love just standing at the window watching the birds que up in the trees waiting to use it when it hasn't rained for a while it makes me feel like I am doing good in the world
Thats cool. I've seen bath tubs used before and they always had a bit of character!
I so appreciate admitting to something being done for the thumbnail and letting the placement be part of the video ❤ thank you for sharing your pond making process with us.
I love my pond. The first thing I built in the garden. 7 mters long, 4 wide and 1.20 m deep at the deepest part. Lots of native plants. And loads of damselflies, dragonflies, other insects, frogs every year.
I dug my pond between the roots of my Silver Birch! Just weighed them down and over a few weeks they stretched!
Love this, entered back in to education to do a course in country side management recently and it’s been awesome, we had a representative from Froglife come in to help us build hibernacula and educate us on all things ponds/amphibians!
From a more personal point when I was very young I helped my dad build a pond and 20 years later it is flourishing never seen so many newts in one place and watching something I helped make, develop was an honour!
Those core memory really made who I am and it’s lovely to see you share your passion with your kids!
Phew....what a relief, for a moment I was very worried, but I am glad that it is just the global warming that evaporated the water. 😁It is a real joy to have a pond, no matter the size. But for people who are not familiar with having a pond it is important to know that fish are happier in a larger body of water because it has more thermal mass which is better for the fish to survive the winter. So I would not recommend people to put fish in a pond that small and that shallow. The fish would also be an easy snack for heron's. And heron's will find it if there is fish. But anything else that finds the pond by itself and choses to live there is good to go. And it also attracts all kind of birds and insects who just come for a drink. And amphibians will find it for sure as well. My favorites are the dragonflies. They are the most accurate and successful hunters on the entire planet with an astonishing 95% succes rate. And they help to suppress the mosquitos in all their different stages of life.
But be careful, because pond building can be very addictive. Stefano Ianiro, a channel that I can highly recommend for the quality of his content if you like watching garden wildlife footage, started with a small wildlife pond just so that he could film the birds and other wildlife in his own garden. Now he bought an entire different piece of property with existing ponds, just so that he can attract and film even more wildlife. It is a joy to watch him transform his property just to create more bio diversity and to attract more wildlife.
As always a big 👍
What a great video. I can't wait to get a garden to build a pond
Do it man, it’s a lot of fun :)
What a transformation! Great job, mate :D Your garden is becoming a small but important wildlife refuge.
Patrik
I built a pond in my back garden last summer. Have a resident frog and various dragonfly and damselfly nymphs and a couple of types of snail. It’s amazing how it all just appears over time. Had a ruddy darter dragonfly visit last autumn probably made eggs. It’s fascinating just sitting and watching pond life. Great job 👏🏻
Ah, lovely, Rob. Yes, embrace the bindweed for now. It's only trying to be itself. Your wee pond will bring so much joy and I hope the newt finds it immediately: its skin looked very dry!
I'm fairly certain that newt was going down for an early hibernation - but since we've have some nice mild and very wet weather - had a huge fat frog bounding through the grass just yesterday, hopefully they found the pond too.
I've had a wild life pond for 4 years with native only plants. Gate keeper butterflies love the water mint. the most important thing is no fish
I have a terrace next to a small canal. My garden is nearly at the end of the canal so the only flow is due to water being pumped in and out of the "polder". I wanted to improve on the situation so I built a very small basin filled with pebbles and connected a pump several meters further up the canal to create rotation, a bit of very shallow water and add oxygen to the water in the canal (as well as the benefits of microbes on the pebbles that get to interact with the canal water), and the basin is full of life after just 2 months. It also seems to be promoting plant growth in the canal
I have dug a pond this summer/early autumn of 2x4 meters and 70 cm deep at the deepest point.
turf from the pond and other places in the garden has become a mound with overwintering possibilities inside, stone setting and a meadow on top.
Inspiration for my backyard in New Zealand :)
Wonderful, love New Zealand. Beautiful country!
"If I was to list off all the ways a pond can benefit wildlife in you garden, this would be a damn long video." I see what you did there and I thoroughly approve.
I'd love to see an update of this in a year's time! Also curious to see how much algae results from the topsoil and tap water put in there. I hope the glue stays water tight. I guess it would make a good bog garden if not haha.
yeah this was a concern, but i'm happy to see what happens! - so long as its a nice wet boggy part, it'll get used.
Yeah an update in the spring would be great too 👍🏻
Very cool, I've been thinking about putting in a pond in mine. I'm lucky that my parents' garden is fairly big so we could have even a like 2m one, we used to get frogs every year just in an old tub we had so I'm thinking it would quickly be appreciated by the wildlife
Yeah any pond big or small will get used!!!
Been watching you since you had around 60 subscribers, its amazing to see how much you've grown as a channel over the past couple years! Great video as always :D
Ah thank you!! yeah the channel is really coming along!!
Great work! Ponds are brilliant for wildlife.
Loved this! if we could all manage even just a little tub as your previous pond, the impact would be staggering. Also loved your honesty about the thumbnail. Cant wait to see the progression of your pond! I am sure I am not the only one that would enjoy seeing an update video at some point. Keep up the great work Rob.
Yeah every little helps! I will certainly be working on an update... spoiler alert - I saw a huuuuge frog heading toward the pond the other day!! Appreciate the support.
Could we get some videos on how to start rewilding our yards/gardens maybe even like regionally specific so we can all do what we can where we can
My mother has two little ponds in her yard, one front and one back, through her partner and our dog dug back in the 80s. The one in front has a plastic kiddie pool for a liner, about a meter across, with a small fountain (necessary here due to mosquitoes) and several plants and happy koi. She feeds them daily most of the year, giving an 85 year old motivation to go outside. The one in back is twice as big and shaped like a chubby-stick lollipop with pond liner. It's been allowed to basically go wild in recent years because she is not steady enough to get to it anymore, but still has a thriving ecosystem with no inputs. Both have frogs year round, including bullfrogs.
I would like to set up my own little pond, if I can afford the labor. 😢
I kinda want to do something similar, especially since my sump pump already pushes water out in the area and now in that space there is water loving plants growing there now, after several years. Maybe not a pond but a "rain garden."
Love Your Work Man!
I appreciate that!
Every little helps. Pond snails can help clean the water
Yes exactly! I'd welcome some pond snails, I wonder if I'd have to introduce them 🤔
There is a good UK youtube channel called "The pond advisor" The great pond snail is a video to watch. A small pond can go from nice to grim fast. These snails will naturally clean up.
@@LeaveCurious You may find that some backpack in off the plants you buy. It's the only explanation I have come up with for the ones in my pond as I certainly didn't put any in there.
That looks so nice! Good job, man.
Great video great pond, we can’t have too many ponds, every garden should have water.
this made me rethink where I plan on putting some grass in my garden :o could fit a pond in quite nicely
Those are mosquito wrigglers in your pond. The addition of some small fish will eliminate them. I don’t know if they bother you, just that mosquitoes are vectors for disease where I live.
Great job with the pond set up 🌱
Thanks 👍
Looking forward to making a bigger pond in my garden as well. Did you look into lining with clay rather than the liner?
I read a fair about lining ponds yes, it’s certainly the more natural way to do it
@@LeaveCurious yeah, I'm undecided for mine
Brilliant, I love it! This year my pond had some duck weed turn up in it. What to me, highlights the importance of these areas for wildlife. I only wish I saw the visitor what brought it with them.
I like to have potholes in my gravel driveway. When it rains they fill with water and birds come and bathe in them.
I am so happy to discover your channel. Rewilding with you from our own temperate rainforest on the West Coast USA!
I have a pond in my garden with a liner (about 8ft x 3ft and 3ft deep in deepest part). I put a couple goldfish in when I created the pond about 5 years ago and regret the fish as they eat too much insect larvae I want, but the pond is now totally self sustaining with clear water and visiting life (the two fish are still alive and have had babies but the babies are not gold but gray/black - maybe the dark ones less likely to be seen and eaten.) Have frogs and snails too which just appeared. Anyway, the water level of the pond drops (or not) so randomly that I can't seem to find rhyme or reason and now just top it when I need to (here we get almost no rain in summer) so I would not necessarily worry you have a hole in your liner. How many times have I been sure I had a hole when the water dropped an inch or more in a day only then to randomly go a week or more with no drop at all.🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️
Any water in a garden is better than none. I originally used an old babybath with a nice sloped side which the frogs seemed to like. Great that you had newts when yiu just had the smaller pond, am sure this new pond will be buzzing with life in the Spring. One good thing to add is a beach with smallish pebbles so that bees and other insects can safely drink.
Nice job my friend.
I dream of getting my own garden one day so that I can turn it into a haven for the local wildlife.
Put some 9 spine sticklebacks in ponds.They feed dragon fly larvae, and they are very small, so they won't eat everything. And a cheap solar power air pump everything in the pond will love you for that on hot sunny day.
I’m making a carnivorous plant bog in my garden next spring.
Bindweed can be such a problem, make sure you keep it in check, I made the mistake of letting it go a couple of years ago because bees love it and they do, but it has literally swamped my garden now and took me half of summer to dig it all out and start fresh, not good so make sure you keep it in check buddy! Great pond and can’t wait to see what turns up, hopefully that newt you found will be living it up rn!
Bindweed has taken over one corner of my garden but it's turned into a great habitat for toads as it's so damp under there so I'm trying to leave that corner for them whilst stopping it taking over everywhere else - it grows so fast though!
@@31Blaize Yes it is a great habitat don’t get me wrong, that’s why I tried to have some but my garden is small and like you say it grows quick so bit of a mistake on my part for not keeping on top of it. Yours sounds good and if you have the time to keep up on it then good stuff, the more flowers the better!
I just love the honesty about the thumbnail. 😀
I dug one in my garden this summer as well! I think I started it a bit late in the season so only have diving beetles and pond snails in there so far - hoping for more next year like newts and dragonflies 😁
Yeah this one’s completed a little late too. Next summer our ponds should be alive!!
@@LeaveCurious I'm so hoping to see newts - I have fond memories of them from being lucky enough to have a pond in the garden while growing up. Very envious of yours already hehe!
It is beautiful
And I understand why you've created it
How are you making it "drowning proof" ?
I mean for small people, we just always make sure we're with them in the garden. Other than that, just didn't dig it too deep!!
I've started seeing a lot of butterflies and dragon flies in my garden. Nice blue dragon flies. Green ones as well.
Always epic to see them hurling past!
I'm going to keep an eye on how this goes, if it works pretty well I might make my own in a very similar position as yours. One question does this new pond get much sunlight and is it essential, as mine will only get direct sunlight for 3-5 hours between late April and mid September-ish?
You make me want to have a larger pond too! The tiny pond there is now was made of a plastic sand box for toddlers.
Create a larger one if you can!
My question is, why are ponds lined with plastic? Forgive me if I’m wrong, but is the black plastic not bad for the soil and water etc, are there other ways to create ponds? How do natural ponds exist? Thanks if anyone knows :)
The little invertebrates wriggling in the water look like mosquitos. You have created a nice mosquito breeding puddle.
Mosquito larvae are the bottom of the food chain for other invertebrates and insects like waterboatman and pondskaters etc. they aren’t a serious problem, no worse than any bucket with water in that’s been left.
Any you reason you chose not to do a small filtration system? A bit more cost, but only by a bit.
Amphibians like it! 🐸
great
Haven’t watched yet but Ik it will be a good vid
Ahhh thank you, I hope you enjoy it!
I am a bit surprised that he did not know what mosquito larvae looked like.
No I generally just play it safe for small wriggly critters, my ID skills are not the best
Make great live food for fish. Now I have an odd desire for a mosquito larvae emoji. The internet is incomplete someone please we must rectify this!@@LeaveCurious
Question how do you stop it going stagnant? Don't you need a filter?
Oxygenating plants will prevent this.
You get many mozzies mate? Or is it too cold up there for 'em?
Be careful make sure you are with your children even a few inches can be deadly. Everyone should have some water in there gardens.
Might not mosquitoes be a problem, breeding willy-nilly and eating up the children? How to mitigate?
Don’t dig in flip flops 😂
nice mosquito breeder..
Came across your channel few days ago. Now I'm first to cmnt
Hey! Welcome and yep you're first!!
don't use plastic liner trash for pond, use sand and cement, its natural, rock.
What do you think about the government saying reintroductions and re Wilding not being a priority
Making a video on this. Will be out this week. In short, I think it’s stupid, soulless and a complete kick in the face of those working to save and bring back missing species.
@@LeaveCurious couldn't agree more
Those "cute" little creatures, are mosquitos :P
They’ll be bottom of the food chain … actually wait my legs will be bottom of the food chain for the mosquitos
Wear heavy boots when digging holes. Ask my grandson why. I did not say "I told you" while bandaging his BooBoo !
I used beer bottles to line my pond, It's deeper than yours and had fish until a grass snake ate them all.
Beer bottles!? This I must see. Sounds like a savage grass snake.
Isn't it a mosquito larvae?
what a reminder that nobody is safe from the contentification of life
I'm wondering if the pond water level dropping is a hole or climate change? You mention it in the video, but do not reach a conclusion. Is this a general problem for ponds across the world? Or is it possible that it could be from normal evaporation?
I don't think theres a hole. I think it was due to two months of very dry weather!
Comments for the algorithm
Bet you wish you’d made it bigger!
What is happened
update on this next year!
Children: fence it off. Keep the pond safe from them and them safe from the pond.
Breeding mosquitoes at home vol. 1
Hahah so true.
The newt will eat them, plus any frogs that come will eat them as well 🙂
Careful with the fenceline! Good video as usual but over time the pond edge may overfill or soak through the to affect the structure of the fence and your neighbours garden..
I think that those "invertebrates" are mosquito larvae. 🦟
I play it safe with my I.D .... 😆
Lovely video thank you. I'd like to recommend David Crossley's Garden YT channel which is also super. 🙂🪴