Creating a wildlife pond/ creating a bog area

[boogieman84]

Hi all,


Firstly I am currently making a wildlife pond in my garden and am awaiting the arrival of some plants. However i'm unsure of how to plant these, I want to make it as natural as possible and as such don't really want to place to the plants in pots(even if suited for ponds) as I have read online that pondlife will benefit more if the plants are allowed to root as they will provide more shelter for larvae/insects etc(is there any truth in this. So i'm wondering how to do this, the only problem is keeping the plants weighed down so that they can root. I have thought about tying some loose netting around the base of the plant, filling it with stones, placing in the pond and then allowing it to root. Then once it has I will cut off the netting, would this work?

If anyone has any advice that would be great. My main question though is whether I will still attract wildlife, dragonflies etc if the plants are in pots.


Secondly I want to create a run off one side of the pond to make a bog area for planting. How is the best way to do this? If anyone has any pictures/ advice on how to do this that would be great. I'm just unsure of a few things, I.E should I use a liner to avoid it drying out too quickly etc

Many thanks,
Matt

[Rashmika]

I boughgt a very small prefab pond last year. I stocked it with native plants where possible... Ragged Robin, Water Forget-Me-Not, Water Soldier, Hornwort, and a reed type plant. I put ferns around the pond for cover... Valerian, Marsh Mallow and Purple Loosestrife and a Bugbane (an awesome plant, very aromatic when it blooms late Summer). Plus a couple of log piles, so that any emerging ampibious life had somewhere to scuttle to.

All the aquatic plants are in baskets.

Within days life had moved in! I think it started with things like rat tailed maggot's (something like that, a form of hover fly larvae I think?).

Then Bloodworms... (good food for Newts I think?)

Then three frogs took up residence (a year later we still have two! Hopefully they'll be breeding in a couple of years).

...and Newts!

About two months later, we started getting Dragonfly and Damselfly checking the pond out. I don't know if they like it though

This year, and to my immense satisfaction, the Newts have most certainly been breeding in the pond.

In terms of a bog, I think you need to dig a layer of soil up, and lay down some pond liner. Then replace the soil and voila, a bog. It's probably more complicated than that but I think the theory is sound!

I dunno if it answers any of your questions, but my experience of a wildlife pond has been a very positive one.

[Malcolm Banks]

You will get plenty of wildlife if the plants are planted in pots or rooted in soil laid in the pond. I have most of my plants in fenestrated pots that allow roots to grow through but also put in a couple of planting pockets. These were dug out of the floor of the pond before adding sand, underlay and then liner - so they need to be of a reasonable dimension otherwise they get lost in the layers. They did make the fitting of the liner a little more tricky but if you persevere you can usually get the folds looking OK. I created a permanently indundated bog area by building a bridge of rocks supported on bricks across one end, but with a gap through which the liner (and water)continued from the pond into the bog area. I then filled the bog area with soil, a mixture of top soil and aquatic soil. I also created occasionally inundated bog gardens running down one side of the pond. I lowered the rim of the pond a little, relative to the rest and continued the liner into beds dug out for the bog gardens. These act as run off when the pond oveflows due to heavy rainfall. The fact they are lined means they retain the water. This gives us a range of planting habitats from completely aquatic through bog to bog garden, and works very well.
Depends where you are with the construction and motivation I guess.
You can see the bog at the bottom of the image below, already planted with a range of bog plants, including insectivourous species The bog gardens are along the left hand edge in this image.


A view from the other end!


I am guessing it may be too late in your case but if you think a couple of photos of the construction might be more helpful than my babblings above I will try and rustle them up.
Good luck!
M

[Insomniak]

Malcolm, that's a brilliant pond set up you have there.
I, for one, would love to see some of the step-by-step pics as you built it.

My pond is up and running for 5 months now and I have a boggy area on one side of it which takes some of the overflow when we get a lot of rain.
Looking at your pics, I think I'll steal some of your ideas and improve on my bog garden set up!

[Malcolm Banks]

Thanks for the compliments Insomniak but I cannot claim all the credit. I read extensively prior to acting and also had my wife co-opted onto the pond construction committee (a potentially dangerous move, but the scars have healed and we are very pleased with the result). I will try and dig out some of the construction images but most of the advice you need is out there.

Going back to one of Matt's questions re anchoring plants, some plants come with little HD plastic weights and others could be anchored in planting pockets, if you really have an aversion to "contained" plants. I have to admit though, having dug all the soil out, put in a liner and water, it did seem a bit counter-intuitive to be lobbing loads of soil back in, to fill the pockets. I put cut bags in and then slid the bag from under the soil, then topped up from the surface. It did create a fair old underwater smog but cleared in a day. In retrospect it may have been better to fill the pockets with soil before filling with water but I do think that the pockets provide a slightly different habitat to that in container plants.
M

[Red Robin]

^^^^
Wow, Malcolm! Your pond and its immediate environment looks fabulous.

All I did was did a (complicated) hole for a small moulded liner and it has no bog area. I'm so glad I found this forum when I did.

A friend who often has to clean out ponds (some quite large) gave me some Iris, oxygenator, lily clump. I weighted down the lily crown with a rock and all the leaves are now new growth since June. I had my first flower last week - Yellow, so I guess it's a native species.

The Iris are in polythene mesh baskets and the oxygenators in earth in terracotta pots with gravel on top. The liner bottom is covered in stone gravel (donated from someone's huge drive/forecourt).

[Red Robin]

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HELP PLEASE:

When I click on "Click Here for more information" to start the process of uploading photos (why not allow the use of Photobucket etc?), I'm told the page isn't found.

And what's the difference between "Image Library" and "Gallery" please?