Creating a wildlife pond is one of those things that you don’t appreciate until it’s finished. A pond is not just the perfect place to relax but also the amount of wildlife they attract is amazing. Ponds don’t just look nice if done properly and in the right location. They can also help solve problems with land drainage if you are having that type of issue.

Finding The Right Location

Choosing the right location for your pond is one of the most important things. The pond I will be showing and talking about in this post was not only dug to attract wildlife but also to help drain what was boggy land. I did not know it was so boggy until my golden labrador came back looking like a black lab.

So I took the decision to place the pond there as I knew it would have no problem holding water. You can see by the image, I just scraped the surface and there was black silty soil on top of the clay.

This makes for a pond that will hold water with no problem. Clay is one of the most important materials to hold water. If you have clay on your land and where you are locating your pond at the bottom of sloping land. It will fill and hold the water great, it will also keep topping itself up after hot weather conditions.

Choosing Your Pond Liner

As I said above I was lucky to have a boggy area on the bottom of my land. Clay was just below the surface and was already holding water. But this may not always be the case and you may find yourself looking for some other way for your pond to hold water.

Now if you are looking for a natural-looking pond. There is a clay type called Bentonite Clay which comes in powder or small pellets. You can mix Bentonite Clay into the soil and it will swell and bind the soil together or you can place the Bentonite Clay on the sides and bottom of your pond.

But if you use this, the sides of your pond need to be a gentle slope, too steep and the Bentonite will roll down the sides

You can also hire a Sheep’s Foot Roller to compact the sides – See Here

If Bentonite is too expensive then you may opt for some form of pond liner. But it will not be as natural if you used a liner over clay. Plus you have the added problem of the liner needing to be replaced or having a hole put through it.

Types of pond liner HDPE (high-density polyethylene), , RPE (reinforced polyethylene), FPP (flexible polypropylene) These liners will do the job but they are mainly used for garden ponds. The cost will come down to the size and type you need and also who you buy it from.

Personally, if I could do it with clay I would use the clay. After all, we are trying to get rid of rubber products. But it will still be great for wildlife in the local area no matter what the pond is lined with. It will come down to what your ground is made up of that will determine how your pond is going to hold water.

Designing Your Wildlife Pond

When it comes to ponds and wildlife you have to put a little thought into the design. You want to always have at least one sloping bank into the water so that any animals that may fall in when trying to get a drink.

Well they can swim the slope and walk out shake of the water and their none the worse and they learnt a lesson and know where it should drink from in future.

You will want to have plenty of rocks around the edges

Digging Out The Pond

This is a great thing especially when you hire or lend a digger to remove the clay and soil. Now if you are removing the excavated soil and clay off-site well that going to cost a lot of money. So use that excavated material to make features around the pond itself. Maybe leave some clay and soil in the middle for an island as I did.

You could also choose to place it somewhere else on your land and cover it with topsoil. There are many things you could do rather than remove it from your land. Think of the types of things you would like to do and save a lot of money in the process.

Create a small hill with a view over the pond below. You get the idea. If you have to spread the clay, spread it and use the topsoil to cover the clay and throw grass seed it will be covered in no time.

Wild Pond Plants

When it comes to plants if you are in the countryside they will pretty much do the work for you. If you want to hurry the process along, go to local ponds and take cutting etc. There are plenty of native plants that you can easily take a bit of root from and that’s all you need, they don’t take long to grow.

Be careful of some plants as they can be really invasive like “not weed” which grows from the bottom and will cover the pond. Don’t get me wrong if you want wildlife they will be happy with this.

If you are looking to have some fish you may want to see it now and then. It will be a struggle every year to clear it out and it will never really disappear.

So choose your plants wisely and for the right reasons. If you do that then you and the wildlife can enjoy the pond.

How To Fill The Pond With Water

Filling the pond is obviously going to depend on the size of the pond and where you dug the pond. If you are next to a brook or stream you could pump the water from there.

But if you’re in a large garden or field away from any natural water sources. You may have to be a little more creative.

Now people always say to fill it up out the tap..? Again this will depend on the size do you have a water connection close by..?

The simple fact is if your pond, is on large size and you have a water meter it could get rather expensive and Im, not the type to pay that sort of money, especially when it falls from. the sky.

So what I like to do is let the pond fill from rainfall now yes this may take some time. But it also allows time for all the insects and plants to make themselves at home. If you did the pond just before winter it will most likely fill over the winter, especially clay ponds.

If it’s in any sort of dip it will fill in no time. You can help it by spreading large “VISQUEEN” sheets around the edges to catch all the waterfalls, make sure you put rocks on the Visqueen to keep it from blowing away. You can also catch and pipe water into the pond from building roofs close by.

It’s a pretty simple thing to do. Get yourself a couple of IBC tanks food grade and let the gutter downpipes fill the tanks. Connect a hose to the tank outlet and run it to the pond this can be done over quite some distance, even further using gravity.

Rocks & Boulders

You will want to start collecting lots of rock, boulders and smaller stones to place around the edges of the pond especially if you use a pond liner. How I place rocks around the ponds I build by placing a large boulder or two together and then small rocks behind those.

Place plenty of smaller stones and rocks behind the bigger stone loosely. Then when you place the soil around the edges cover the smaller rocks with the soil. This will allow Nuets and Frogs to hibernate in the cracks between them.

Rocks not only help the amphibians hibernate but they also add character to the pond and are great places for plants to grow. They will grow routes between the rocks and keep them sturdy growing healthy routing systems.

Find Free Rocks

Rocks and boulders can be expensive to buy from garden centres and quarries. How I got all the rocks I needed and more by simply looking on Facebook Marketplace.

There is always someone either giving them away or selling them really cheap when they are redesigning their gardens. If you start collecting a couple of months before you start to dig the pond itself. Then you should have more than enough to place around the outside and inside the pond.

When placing stones inside the pond pile them into different size piles. These will help pond insect to hide from predators that may want to eat them.

Make sure you don’t place sharp rocks into your pond if you have used a liner to keep the water in. The last thing you want is to puncture your liner and have to find the leak.

Wildlife

Once your pond is finished and even before it is finished in most cases you will see the local wildlife already in and around the pond.

You will attract all types of mammals to your pond like Hedgehogs, Foxes, and Badgers if they are in the local area. Birds of all kinds from Ducks to Pheasants and plenty of Frogs and Nuets you may even have rare Nuets take up residents.

Bats will be flying over the pond at night swooping down close to the water and catching the insects of which there will be many. I love seeing all the insects and huge Dragon Flies.

If you wanted to release a few fish into the pond that’s fine. But don’t be surprised if. a Heron stops by for supper one day and may visit until all the fish are gone.

This is why if you are putting fish in and you want to keep them safe then you are going to have to protect the fish. There are various methods some people use false Herons or netting. I think netting the pond will do more damage than good to other wildlife.

So if you are not keeping Kio fish then don’t bother trying to protect them. But if you choose other small fish such as wild sticklebacks etc. Then make sure they have lots of hiding places for when the Heron visits.

The Heron will never get them all and they will breed too so there will be plenty of new fry growing and hiding in plants etc.

Dogs are a great way to keep the Herons at bay especially if they have the roam the place. If you see a Heron make sure your dog does too and train the dog to chase the bird. It will soon lose interest and go for easier pickings.

Wildlife Pond Saftey

Digging a wild pond is great and can benefit everyone, you and the wildlife. They can also be deep and deadly in summer or winter. Ponds with clay bottoms can sometimes be hard to get out of and you can get your feet stuck.

Children around ponds especially really young children who are as curious as you were as a child can easily fall in if you’re busy doing something else.

Then you may not notice till it’s too late. So if you have small children then build a small fence around the pond and only let the child near the pond when you are.

Never ever walk on icy ponds as you can see from the image below this is my new pond it ices over really quickly when the temperature drops.

This can be a dangerous place for children to play in winter so educate your children to stay away from iced-over ponds. No matter how thick you think the ice is, it’s never thick enough to lose a life testing how thick it is by walking out onto the ice.

Dying Ponds Wildlife Ponds

If you want to make your pond water look amazing there are plenty of pond dyes out there. Only use a little at first to see how dark you want your water. You can get Blue, Sky Blue, Aqua Blue, Green, Black etc. Whatever colour you like there is probably the colour you need.

Pond Dye will not hurt your fish or other wildlife though it will dye your hands if you don’t wear gloves to protect them. It can take some time to remove from your hands and you certainly won’t be able to remove it from your clothes. So make sure to wear old clothes no matter how careful you think you are. I bet you that it will land on your cloaths

If you have built a really large pond then buy a “Saftey Float” and place it right next to the pond so it can be easily seen and thrown.

I will be adding more to this post and what types of plants you can purchase to make your pond look amazing.