Maintaining a healthy pond and also attracting wildlife to your pond is not solely dependent on the pond itself but is also heavily influenced by the way that the surrounding area is landscaped.

In order to both attract visisting birds and to enable a possible escape route for unwilling swimmers, a shallow beach area is a great feature to incorporate in your pond design. If you have destructive fish such as Koi, it may only be possible to plant in shallower areas where they cannot reach. Varying depths of pond will also support different types of plants.

It can often be the case that the pond surround is quite a stark environment. The clean, minimalist lines that are so common in modern design restrict the types of wildlife that may be attracted to your pond. Frogs will appreciate a wet, shaded and marshy area surrounding a pond. They like to be in the vicinity of fresh water rather than necessarily residing in a pond. Well planted pond surrounds that are not exposed to uninterrupted sunlight help to create this environment.

Providing shade can be a difficult topic. Trees are always the obvious solution for creating shade in an outdoors environment but many, if not most, pond keepers are generally not keen on having trees surrounding a pond. The main issue is that leaf fall in autumn is not only unsightly on the water’s surface but does provide a large boost of organic matter in the pond. This can store up problems for spring when a large excess of nutrients prompts algal growth.

Ideally shade should be provided around the pond but may require a creative solution to achieve without creating additional problems.

A variety of plants in your pond will perform a number of functions that should benefit both your fish and also any other wildlife that depends on your pond for its existence.

Most people will probably be aware of the important role that plants play in turning carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into oxygen. This exact same process occurs in aquatic plants but this is not their sole function.

Aquatic plants thrive on nutrients within the water, of which, nitrates are a key type. Nitrates are readily available in pond water as they are an end product of the process of breaking down ammonia. Ammonia is a water pollutant that is continuously produced by the fish in the pond. It is essential to have a mechanism for removing nitrates and plants do this successfully. In the absence of plants, nitrates will readily fuel algal blooms.

Plants also provide shade which is very important to your pond. Providing shade helps to both restrict temperature fluctuations in warmer weather and also, as above, helps to restrict algal growth by reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the water (sunlight being a necessary element for plant growth).

Lastly, plants also provide both food sources and shelter for an extensive variety of insect and life and a habitat for micro-organisms, all of which perform small but significant roles in maintaining water quality and chemical balance.

Ponds have disappeared from Britain’s landscape at a steady rate for thousands of years. Ever since the industrial revolution, this loss of ponds has rapidly accelerated and during the last 100 years, Britain has lost 90% of its ponds.

Three thousand years ago, Britain was an island covered by extensive wetlands. Gradually, through natural processes, a proportion of the pools that would make up these wetlands would naturally dry up or fill with silt and debris to eventually be lost forever. With nature allowed to proceed uninterrupted, these deceased ponds would be replaced with some level of equilibrium, by new ponds. In actuality, with man making his own demands on the available dry land, new ponds would form less readily which led to the slow and steady disappearance observed over many hundreds of years.

As time progressed, man not only interrupted the natural creation of ponds, but actively reclaimed wetlands to use for agriculture. This process clearly accelerated the demise of the British pond.

The relatively recent prevalence of both industrial machinery and plumbing caused a rapid increase in the loss of Britain’s ponds and wetlands. It was both unnecessary to have ponds positioned strategically around the countryside and also far easier to reclaim land on a scale not previously achievable.

Britain’s wildlife has clearly suffered from this extensive loss so the humble water garden has become a last bastion for maintaining a significant sample of our wildlife heritage.

One of the cornerstones of fish husbandry is maintaining good water quality. Much as we may not choose to do so, as humans we could swim in some fairly unpleasant water with limited fear for our health. A fish is not afforded that luxury as the water is not just an environment they pass through (as the human swimmer does) but it is a key component for their very existence.

Basically fish do everything in water. This includes eating, respirating and producing waste. All of these activities are continuously affecting the make up of the water and without a mechanism for reversing these affects, the water will become too polluted to support healthy fish.

Fortunately, nature provides all of the necessary tools to provide this clean up service in the form of aquatic plants and a multitude of other micro-organisms that utilise and process these toxins to return them to beneficial water constituents.

The biggest challenge that faces the fish keeper is actually one of their own making. The densities of fish in the typical fish pond far exceed the levels that would be found in nature. An outcome of this is that the natural process are not sufficient to manage the excessive waste produced in a fish pond.

It is important to ensure that your pond has mechanisms to manage these pollutants. This is why water features, filters and pumps are commonly used to help aerate water, tackle ammonia build up and remove waste products.

A wildlife pond offers a very different proposition to a fish pond but it does have one very significant advantage in that it will actually populate itself over a period of time.

Wildlife ponds still need to be conceived through sensible planning, ensuring that they are located to minimize the risk of collecting polluted run-off water. They also require their design to incorporate a variety of depths and features to encourage as broad a spectrum of wildlife as possible. Surrounding features such as varied planting and shaded areas that are appealing to frogs in particular will add to the appeal of your pond for surrounding wildlife. Beyond these considerations, amongst others, the pond will not require features such as pumps and filters to maintain a healthy environment.

A key to having a successful wildlife pond is patience. Allowing the pond to populate itself will possibly test this patience to its limits as it will take many months to see real developments. Beneficially, as the pond populates itself naturally, it will develop its own natural balance. In a fish pond, the introduction of fish into a confined space can totally upset the waters balance, this will simply not happen in a naturally populated pond. As the pond tends away from a healthy balance, growth will either cease or slow down in the problem areas. The changes will be imperceptible to the observer but will nevertheless be taking place. Due to this self regulation, pumps and filters are not required.

Manual intervention in your wildlife pond should be minimal although it will potentially benefit from occasional silt removal. Many people will chose to have either a wildlife pond or a fish pond as the two do not generally mix well without the luxury of a substantially sized pond. However, there is absolutely no reason not to consider having both a wildlife pond and a fish pond to really achieve two very different and interesting environments.

A key part of intelligent pond design is ensuring that the pond fits naturally into its surrounding environment. The varieties of pond achievable are every bit as limitless as the varieties and types of garden. Given the almost limitless variations of both pond and garden, statistically speaking, it is far more likely that a mismatch will be achieved than a successful blend of design harmony.

Fortunately, pond and garden design are not total design lotteries and most people will have, at the very least, an element of consistency to their design aspirations. This is not to say that faux pa’s are not a very possible outcome, but adopting simple design philosophies should enable most people to achieve satisfying results from their pond project. For many, this is possible without necessarily having to rely on potentially expensive professional help.

This is not to dismiss the benefits of employing professional designers. For many people, design and construction is all part and parcel of the pond experience, but, if this pond installation has been a key ambition and is something you wish to be a source of pleasure for many years to come. In acknowledging your own design capabilities and employing professional services, you may be far more contented with your end result for many years than you would be always excusing the obvious design flaws in your ill-conceived DIY project. After all, a good designer will not be stamping their own personal ideas on your space but they will be helping you to fully realise your own ambitions for the project whilst adding some of their own personal flair. The end product should be a skilfully worked example of your own basic concept.

However your pond comes about, hopefully the end result will be something that will have you continually trying to make new friends, simply so that you can share the beauty of it…

Or maybe to just show off a little!

A raised pond affords the possibility to create a less common type of pond feature. Raised ponds can be particularly well suited to gardens with slopes or they can be installed due to the potential greater safety for youngsters or older folk, or they can also be chosen simply for the different landscape feature they represent.

Installing a raised pond poses different design and construction challenges to the more common sunken ponds. Firstly, a raised pond makes substantially less demands in the form of excavation. There is also the added benefit that there will most likely be a use for the soil that has been excavated somewhere in the pond surround. The challenge of a raised pond is the greater demands that are made on the surrounding structure. A sunken pond will disperse pressure into the surrounding earth whereas the great pressure exerted by several hundred or thousand gallons of water in a raised pond must be held in place by the constructed walls.

Popular ways to construct the surround are through the use of railway sleepers or by constructing a rockery wall that can perform both a decorative and structural role. These and other types of surrounding structures can be used to house a pond constructed using any of the popular pond lining techniques. In this type of project, a concrete construction has the advantage of providing a significant degree of structural strength in its own right.

One benefit of this type of pond design is that it is possible to get close to the water’s edge without crouching or kneeling and there is also considerably less possibility (although still some) of people falling in.