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Step by Step guide to building your own Wildlife pond

Add a stream. Shallow flowing water adds the dimension of motion which gives your landscape a life of its own. The sound of the water is very relaxing and sets the mood for the garden. The most obvious impact of adding a stream to a garden pond is emphasizing the overall size and feeling of the water features. From just 12" to 3 or 4ft wide a flowing stream ties everything together and looks natural.

building garden ponds in Bristol, Weston super mare, Clevedon, Nailsea, Portishead, Burnham, Bridgwater, North Somerset and Somerset

Recent times have seen about three quarters of our natural wildlife ponds lost. Along with the wetland plants and wildlife they supported.

By building and installing a natural wildlife friendly pond, you'll be creating an oasis for frogs, toads, newts, and dragonflies. You'll enjoy watching the wildlife come and go and helping kids see and understand the workings of nature.

Wildlife garden ponds, streams and water features are built and installed by our pond installation team using puddled clay or rubber liner.

Quotes to install or repair nature garden ponds and water features are free in Bristol, Somerset, Weston super mare, Portishead, Clevedon and further afield when part of a landscaping project.

How to make a garden pond safe for children

When planning and desiging a garden pond, safety considerations are important, especialy if you have children or grand children visiting. I have listed a few things we can do to make the pond safer here. making a pond child safe

Garden Ponds and Water feature tips

Sticklebacks or minnows are ok in small numbers and maybe add a few goldfish for the kids. If numbers are kept sensible you will never need to feed, leaving the natural productivity and diversity of life in a pond to sustain them. I have kept goldfish in my pond for years and have never fed them. They seem healthy

, look happy

and breed

.

Ask your pond builder to add some silt from a mature pond, this helps build up the balance of your new pond and if the pond builder adds a bucket of water from a chemical free pond this will give your nature pond a good start by increasing insect life that is essential to the pond.

Remember if you are not keeping koi you wont need filters or use chemicals to clean the pond water, despite what the garden centre tells you. If you get the balance right, nature will help you to do this and you will have a happy and healthy wildlife pond. I have listed a few safe plants and some to avoid below.

In a new wildlife pond add water snails, they help break down decaying plants and reduce the build up of algae.

Safe Native Plants for Garden Ponds
Hornwort, Water milfoil,Water crowfoot, Water starwort, White water lily, Yellow water-lily, Arrowhead Sagittar, Broad-leafed pondweed, Water soldier ,

Maintaining your garden wildlife pond

This should be very easy. Keep marginal plant cover to about a third of the ponds surface, leaving the other two thirds for submerged weeds and bare mud. Silt normally takes many years to fill a pond - you shouldn't need to clear any out for at least five years. Don't ever "totally clean out" a pond as this will destroy the wildlife community it has developed. Adding water features that move the water (stream) help keep ponds healthy .

When is the best time to thin out marginal plants in your pond
When amphibians have completed their life-cycle, the pond is shallow and not too cold to make the job unpleasant. But remember most pond animals prefer the cover of plants. A good wildlife pond will be at least a third covered with emergent and floating plants.

How to control algae and blanket weed in garden ponds.
In moderation, algae provide great habitat for aquatic insects and is completely natural and does not harm your fish or plants. But if you have a problem resulting from the high fertility of your pond. The cause may be fertiliser added to plants you have bought from your garden centre, maybe its a ploy to create dependency, adding too much fish food will also feed algae.

Some people use barley straw which inhibits algae and blanket weed growth. But this isn't a long-term cure. Most new ponds have some algae, blanket weed overgrowth in the first year so don't worry to soon. Shade as much of the water as possible with lilies and other aquatic plants. Algae requires sunlight.

Continually removing the blanket weed algae will eventually lower the nutrient levels. There are chemicals that will kill blanket weed and other algae, but the dead algae sinks to the bottom and rots, providing more nutrients for a fresh new bloom, you will need to add more and so the cycle starts over again. More here

Plants to avoid in nature ponds
Australian swamp stonecrop or New Zealand pygmy weed, (often labeled Tillaea recurva or Tillaea helmsii), Parrots feather,Floating pennywort,Indian balsam,Water lettuce,Water chestnut,Water hyacinth,Water ferns (Azolla species )

Plants for a Bog Garden
Make the most of waterlogged areas in gardens and lawns and install a water feature or a bog area water feature filled with colourful bog garden plants. How to make and plant a bog garden

What does it cost to have a pond built

The cost of Garden pond design and build.

A garden pond and waterfall installation requires quality components and a lot of physical labour. If you would like a wildlife pond, stream or water feature installed we can design and install it for you. Please ask for a price.

The cost for installing a small basic garden pond,

Digging out the shape, lining with butyl or greenseal pond liner and edging with turf or stone from the garden, will be about £1000.

The cost for building larger ponds,

Adding water falls, water features and streams using natural stone, etc. will cost more, depending on access, cost of materials like natural stone, pond pump, liner and labour and disposing of the excavated soil..

We also repair and fix leaks in garden ponds including clay lined ponds in North Somerset, Bristol, Weston super mare, Portishead, Nailsea, Clevedon, Bath, Yeovil,Highbridge Burnham on Sea, Taunton, Wells and Bridgwater area.

How to make Garden Ponds using clay.

Water feature and garden ponds design and installation using puddling clay.

Clay is the traditional method of lining ponds/canals and is the best material for lining garden ponds, wildlife ponds and water features. It's spread over the excavation, mixed with water and then repeatedly trampled to remove all the air space and to break down the structure of the clay. Puddling is hard work and must be done thoroughly to make a waterproof seal. In the past, flocks of sheep were used.

A modern method is to use a dumper truck or JCB, driven back and forth or even a wacker. Or better still enlist the local school, the kids love it and learn about an almost forgotten skill.

If you are lucky and can wait, clay may be available cheaply as a waste product from local building sites and ground work or more likely and I'm afraid more expensive, from clay producers and most suppliers of aggregates. The puddling clay I use is sourced locally when I can. Otherwise I use the supplier of puddling clay used by British Waterways for lining canals.

The clay layer should be at least (8") thick and laid in layers. Once properly puddled, the clay lining remains waterproof indefinitely, provided it remains underwater. Exposed clay dries out and cracks, so is not suitable for steep streams and waterfalls.

A natural meandering stream can be created without using rubber liners, even in very confined woodlands and difficult parts of the garden. Instead we useBentonite. Bentonite is the same clay used in canal building and repairing leaks in lakes and reservoirs.

Lots more about making a clay lined pond here Puddling clay for a pond

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Quotes for stream, water feature and garden pond installation are free.