LARGE Wildlife Pond Creation - Start to Finish

Welcome to another episode of Wild Your Garden and in this video we're going to be renovating an existing pond and making it into a fantastic habitat for wildlife. Now as you can see the pond behind me is a really good habitat already and it's full of newts and frogs there's a few toads as well and even home to a family of moorhens which lay two or three broods a year which successfully have fledged and they've now moved off the pond. It's early November so it's a really good time to be thinking about revamping this existing water body and starting to do some of the clearance works obviously because most of the wildlife is now dispersed out of the pond or it's at its final stages i.e for example the larvae of course anything like your dragonfly nymphs damselfly nymphs we can now collect those out of the water once the water has drained down keep them in some buckets and of course house those temporarily until we have lined the pond when we can obviously put them back in. So the first job to do with this wildlife pond is to basically clear around the edges now we've got some really nice trees there's a lovely alder there behind me which we're going to leave we're just going to lift some of the lower branches so there's less leaf litter and leaf debris going into the pond each year we've also got some cracking goat willows over on the right hand side of the pond but again they are just beginning to overshadow the pond a little bit so we're going to be cutting those back lifting the lower branches and equally some of the scrub and the shrubs for example this to my right here which is a really nice hedge line we're going to be looking to keep the existing features so the holly on this end which is nicely maturing now we've got lots of obviously this time of year they're just going over but there's some great sort of hawthorn berries as well which are really good for the birds and the red wings and the field fairs in particular will enjoy those and also there's some slow berries on the black thorns which are again going to provide a good food source for our thrushes and other birds through the winter months so we're going to retain as much as that as we can but with black thorn it is a little bit invasive and it does spread by suckers so we're going to be taking some of those out away back from the pond edge and also some of the other trees that have naturally regenerated and that are growing right on the pond edge which will then give us a nice band of planting if you like for all the native wildflowers things such as the purple loosestrife the water mint the brook lime and everything else that we'll come on to later on when we get around to planting it so the first things first is to get the get the shrubs and everything cut back and then of course we can look at pumping the water out and seeing what we've got so being as it's lunchtime i thought i'd just introduce you to our latest member of the team so if we take a moment just to expand on a point i made a little while ago about the leaf debris entering the pond and you may be able to see from this angle just how black that water is and that of course is from all this leaf litter dropping into the pond and rotting down over time and of course increasing the nutritional value of the water which is a bad thing for the wildlife and for the plants in it hence why there isn't that many wildflowers there aren't that many wildflowers in the middle things like your lilies and things obviously they will struggle if the water is too rich and fertile so one of the things we're going to do is as i say try and cut these shrubs back so that it gives a little bit more breathing space if you like to this and of course if you've got a smaller water body that is nearer trees obviously i'd always advise if you're digging one from scratch to move it away from trees as much as possible but if you have got an existing water body and you do have a bit of an issue with leaf litter of course there are two ways you can combat this one is by actually clearing the leaves off the surface of the water as they fall or as they land which of course is a bit bit tiresome and a bit tedious so that might not be practical of course in winter months as well if obviously most of the most of you have a nine to five and you're going out in the dark coming back in the dark and it's only for really two or three weeks of course end of october into november when these leaves are falling but the other way you can do it is of course to get yourself a little frame made up out of timber with a mesh over it like a plastic mesh and put that over the pond so that of course that will trap any leaves and stop them from falling in the pond and then of course remove that once the leaves have finished falling because of course you then want to let the animals and birds and everything else have access to that water body to bathe and drink so just a bit of advice for you there but like i say you'll see a bit more shortly once we start pumping the water out and getting the getting down to the bottom of the pond you'll see just how much that leaflet has built up over the the last of the water and look at that behind me that is like gold that stuff is absolutely what you want in a pond that's all hornwort which is your oxygenate oxygenating plant which does very well in shady conditions which obviously these trees have provided and we've got the digger just lowering the pump in just to get the last dregs out it's very difficult otherwise to try and reach the rest of these pockets of water and as you can see quite a water body stretching behind me now it so all the insects that we're finding dragonfly larvae everything like that that's now in the shallows we are rescuing and putting in buckets and so that tomorrow we can take out this existing liner more hornwort on the bank look at that so you can now see we've got most of the water out of the pond there's only a little bit left but unfortunately now the consistency has turned somewhat into more of a thick soup consistency so it's very very difficult to try and pump it because of course it's just that much heavier than the water so it's a bit awkward for our pump so we are down to physically removing it now with the digger bucket which is a long and slow process however you can see now looking at my wellies or my thigh waders just how much effect those leaves falling into the pond has had from all of the trees surrounding you can just tell how much of that leaf litter has built up and built up and built up to probably an excessive nearly two feet of silt at the bottom of this pond so time to get down and get dirty and get that out and then we can look at relining the pond once the liner is out so for those of you that have been following what i do for a few years you'll know how much i bang on about grey wagtails coming to one of the ponds i build and if you can see behind me just on the wire there i've got a little visitor oh there we go dropping down into the pond just to get these these birds to thrive on the insects that are associated with water bodies so uh yeah great to see year when i can say it's 1.4 degrees and we are lining a 10 by 20 meter pond our biggest pond of the year so what a way to end the year this will be our last pond of 2020 so not a bad way to round off the year and as you can see jack and ash have been working tirelessly today it's been freezing cold uh fingers red raw but absolutely worth it once we start getting the hose on this obviously underneath the liner there is a layer of protective fleece or underlay which will of course protect from any sharp roots or sharp stones and roots and prevent the liner from being punctured and there'll be another layer of fleece go back on this top of this liner before we put the subsoil on so yeah stay tuned it's a bit of a mammoth pond as you can see but uh going to be well worth it once we get get the subsoil in and hopefully get it planted in the next couple of can see we now have water so yeah it's great we've got all the really stony chalky subsoil fabulous stuff we're going to make some brilliant wildflower meadows and different scrapes and areas for particularly small blue butterfly potentially chalk hill blue which aren't far away as well but a story for another day but yeah the wildlife pond is coming on really nice so you can see we've got some poorer subsoil it is still poor it's not as rich as it looks around the edges of the pond most of the central part as i say is completely filled with this poorer stony stuff as you can see so yeah all looking good the fog's really coming in now it's a really bright blue sunny day about half an hour ago but the fog's starting to settle so i don't think we'll get much more done today uh but yeah there you go we've got the best rest of the top soil to go around the edges as i say and then we can start thinking about planting stay tuned i thought i'd come back up to the balcony where it is a rather splendid view as you can see just to give you an overview of the pond because it's so much easier to see how we are getting on from up here so as you can see the chalk subsoil has left this absolutely beautiful sort of almost turquoise blue water effect in the middle of the pond which is just incredible and it's still being filled up as you can see by the hose coming off a bit of fleece over there and we now have one times cobble beach which of course will be great access for all the animals coming in and out of this pond along with the shallow margins as you can make out and all the subsoiling is now in around the edges we've got we've done the first trim of the liner second trim to do tomorrow but tomorrow is planting day so it's going to be a really great day and of course i'll do an update video after we have finished but this is going to be a hell of a pond