CREATE YOUR OWN WILDLIFE POND

Wendy Graham offers tips on how to encourage wildlife in your garden.

WITH the rise in decking, paving and artificial grass, space for wildlife in our gardens is dwindling. Over 70 per cent of natural ponds have been lost from the British countryside in the last 100 years, too.

Our wildlife is suffering, with one in six species in the UK now at risk of extinction.

One impactful thing you can do to help is to make space for nature in your garden.

After all, the UK’s gardens encompass more land than all our National Nature Reserves combined.

If we all helped nature in our garden, imagine the collective impact.

One of the easiest ways to help is to add a wildlife pond.

Bees, butterflies and other pollinators play a crucial role in our ecosystem.

By providing a water source and a variety of native plants, your pond can become a haven for pollinators.

Plus, once you attract pollinators to your garden, this in turn attracts other wildlife that feeds on them, such as birds and mammals.

It’s a ripple effect that extends right beyond your garden.

It’s not just the rich source of food that attracts these creatures – it’s the water itself. They use the water for bathing, drinking, breeding and more.

By fostering a healthy pond environment, you also encourage beneficial predators like frogs, toads and newts to make a home in your garden.

These natural allies are champions at keeping snails and slugs in check.

This helps your flowers and vegetables to bloom without resorting to using chemical methods that can harm wildlife, such as slug pellets.

To make your pond amphibian friendly, add native oxygenating aquatic plants to provide shelter and breeding spaces, and a source of oxygen during hibernation periods.

Add rocks or logs at the water’s edge to offer prime sunbathing spots.

Maintain a gentle slope for easy access and exit – you want to make it as easy as possible for them to get in and out of the water to get to those pesky slugs!