Carol Klein explains how a pond can enrich your garden
It may not be dramatic, but it's a living, breathing hub full of life!
Our little pond has woken up. Several weeks ago, way back in January, it was a sorry sight, full of duckweed and debris with leaves and detritus from more than a year’s neglect.
Dean donned his waders and in a spectacularly heroic effort, cleaned it out. We were both conscious that spawning time was drawing close. Sure enough, a couple of weeks later, great clumps of frog spawn started to bubble up.
Now, I can skim some of the unstoppable duckweed and watch tadpoles basking in the sun at the shallow end and swim off into the not so-murkyas-they-used-to-be depths.
Caltha palustris is in full flower now. It has moved itself around the pond by self-seeding, its seeds no doubt moving around on the surface of the water until they lodge themselves in a hospitable corner. What a plant it is, no flower in the world is a purer yellow than kingcups – or marsh marigolds, water blobs or water bubbles. Having a multitude of common names is a sure sign of popular affection.
Wetlands support some of our most outstanding wildflowers, from the golden globes of kingcups to the exotic blooms of water lilies. Without them our natural world is a poorer place.
The plants that grow in, on and alongside water are special. They’ve evolved together with their watery environment, perfectly adapted to the special challenges this presents. Most plants forced by flood to face serious inundation for any length of time would simply rot, they’d drown, but our bog-dwellers and paddlers are perfectly at home.
It’s believed that before the last Ice Age the yellow flag, Iris pseudacorus, was a landlubber but as the glaciers retreated the water table rose, ground became wetter and the iris was faced with the option to sink or swim.
Very gradually the iris developed adaptations that allowed it to survive. It still has a tuberous root but now it’s waxy and resilient, its roots are wiry and can cope with living in wet conditions or even totally submerged. We have the variegated variety both in and alongside the pond.
It may not be very dramatic but our little pond enriches the garden. From these reeds and irises dragonflies emerge from their nymph stage to assume adult magnificence. Our pond is a living, breathing hub, full of life and energy.
The presence of water introduces a whole new cast to join in the garden drama. Providing for wildlife is not a one-way process; not only will you have the thrill of watching tadpoles emerge from frogspawn but also the frogs that will be the final stage of the process will spend most of the rest of their lives in the garden.
As well as having fascinating lives, dragonflies and damselflies are a delight to watch as they complete aeronautical circuits of the garden. Many of these creatures need only a modest amount of water reliably available, to turn up and enrich the garden.