Over the last week or so, as we have seen some rather dramatic rises in temperature, the wildlife 'activity' in the garden has increased too! I've been thrilled to see a plethora of newly emerged large red damselflies and today they were busy making the next lot! That very long hot spell we had two years ago increased the population of ladybirds and thankfully that has continued. Every now and then you can catch a couple of them making new ladybirds with their little wiggly dance that always puts a smile on my face. I could lie and say its the joy of having ladybirds around but the truth is I just find their mating ritual quite amusing in a very non scientific and totally base way.
When I first moved into the cottage, nearly five years ago no, I was thrilled to see a pond in the garden. I've wanted to have a fish pond since I was a child and although the pond needed a little restoration I was quite excited by the through of seeing orange and gold flashes darting through the water. It didn't happen though. As I began to clear out the years of fallen leaves I chucked back in newt after newt and dragonfly nymphs after dragonfly nymphs. I was disappointed. There was no way I could introduce ornamental fish into what was already a well functioning ecosystem and everyone knows you can't keep fish and have wildlife right? Well that's what I thought too, so I built a pond especially for fish and left the 'wildlife' pond fish-free. It soon became pretty evident that the wildlife had other ideas. The very next day after I had filled the new pond with water there was the biggest toad I have ever seen in it. It was so big I actually thought it was a juvenile hedgehog and cursed myself for not putting in an escape route straight away.
The next step was to create a shallow pebbled filled area at the edge and to add oxygenating plants to the water. I chucked in a couple of pond snails from the other pond for good measure and a few days later I went shopping for fish! The pond is not huge and I had no plans to put in a water filter, but instead use plants as a vegetative filter. One well known garden centre told me that would only work with a huge pond over about five years and proceeded to try and sell me a £100 filtration system until I explained to the salesperson that unless it ran on solar power there was no where to plug it in. So I shopped elsewhere for my fish and came home with five very small and very healthy looking sarasa comets. They looked tiny in the great expanse of water, which quickly turned a yukky shade of pea soup! A combination of sun and increased nutrients in the water from fish poop and the single cell algae went nuts!
But I was convinced that the water could be kept clear with vegetation and with a combination of plants donated by a friend and some bought I put in marginals, water mint, water plantain, butomus and flag iris, these love to 'sook' the nutrients out of the water and a water lily that shades the surface along with a water forget-me-not that rafts across. In spring last year, the pond was green again, but it cleared in the winter and as the plants have become more established, the water has remained crystal clear this year. I'm now having to thin the plants out so the fish have some room to swim. The fish have tripled their size, thank goodness I didn't overstock, but the most interesting thing has happened. My ornamental fish pond is full to brimming with wildlife. The newts have moved in and bred. We've had frogs getting romantic, but no spawn in any of the three ponds again. Toads getting romantic and they have spawned, last year we had toadlets and the bottom layer is just moving with all kinds of aquatic insects and even freshwater shellfish that I suspect arrived in some of the plants, all living happily beside the fish in a beautifully clear pond. I supposed its all about balance. I have no doubt the fish don't just eat the proprietary fish food that they get numerous times a day and we never seem to have a problem with mosquito larva but there must be enough vegetation and hiding places and food to support all manner of species who have made the pond their home and I'm absolutely delighted. Would I now go and add fish to the wildlife pond....nope! I think its a much better idea not to disturb an existing ecosystem and instead, let the wild life chose where they want to be...and have no fear, if you build it, they will come.