The Importance of Water for Wildlife
If you only do one thing for wildlife in your garden this year add a pond or micro-pond. It doesn’t matter what size of garden you have you can add water in ways which will support masses of our wildlife. Be inspired by our short video of micro ponds – they are all in one garden.
Water and Micro Pond Workshop
Sadly our workshop on water and micro ponds was cancelled. We’ve turned our presentation into 2 videos which are below. This is the first time we’ve done this and we’ve made some mistakes but until we have time to correct those mistakes we’ve posted what we have done.
The biggest mistake is how long these are – and therefore we lied in the videos – they are about 25 minutes each, which we know is too long and in the future, we will make our make videos in small segments. You can stop and return at any point.
Wild Stroud Plant List
Plants for Ponds and Bog Gardens
It was inspirational doing the research for this list. There are so many fantastic, beautiful native plants for ponds and bog gardens – we had no idea. This list is not exhaustive it’s our first attempt to create something useful that might help you choose the plants you’d like.
We’ve included information on where you can buy the plants online. We found the RHS site really useful for more detailed information about how big a specific plant might grow, it spread, whether it likes sun or shade. If you go to the RHS and type the plant name into the search bar it will give you details for at least 80% of the plants we mention. www.rhs.org
Micro Pond Inspiration
Here are a few photos from Gypsy’s garden and her 14 micro ponds – hope you are inspired
Making a pond
The Wild About Gardens initiative between the Wildlife Trusts and the RHS has done lots of brilliant resources to help create gardens that support wildlife. I think this pond leaflet is particularly good as it covers everything you need to know to start designing your pond – large or small. It then gives you everything you need to know about looking after your pond and what to expect you’ll find over time. Pond Leaflet
Liners or plastic shell?
We address this in our Water workshop but here’s a quick summary. Plastic shell sounds easy but the bigger it is the hard it is to get it completely level and keep it completely level as you fill it with water. There are lots of different liners on the market, in essence, the more you are willing to spend the better the end look and the easier they are to work with. We’ve done a fact sheet with links to some websites and suppliers who have put up lots of information. Link here. Putting in an underlay is vital to stop the liner from getting damaged, if you want a natural one try and source sheep wool.
Mini Pond Instructions – The Wildlife Trust
Make a mini pond in your garden. Not all gardens have room for a big pond and not everyone has the budget for one but that doesn’t mean you can have ponds. Wild Stroud’s micro-pond expert has 11 ponds in her garden, which is pretty small and all are made in recycled buckets and tubs. Positioned in different places they attract a range of wildlife from frogs and newts to birds and bees. The birds come to drink and bathe while she sits and has a cup of tea. This instruction sheet from the Wildlife Trust shows you how to do it