Summer for the Pond

My main hesitation before installation the pond was that I would just be creating a perfect habitat for mosquitoes, of which we already had plenty. We’re right now at peak ‘mozzie’ in the garden I can say that although there are still plenty, I’m not sure that there are more and the benefits of the pond are far outweighting the negatives.

To start with it has transformed a rather boring corner of the garden.

After one year I did finally get frogs into the pond and in general I had 4 or 5 residents.

But unfortunately, all of a sudden they largely disappeared. On checking the garden cameras the reason was quickly obvious, and I’m afraid that it was the cats, again.

The cats, which are still quite young, suddenly discovered that they not only had a taste for frogs, but also that they were easy to catch. Frogs can’t fly away.

Although they can hide underwater frogs also spend a lot of their time out of the pond and I think it is here in the pond surroundings that the cats have been finding them.

I’m afraid that it’s rather sad and I’m very disappointed that so many of the frogs have been taken, but there is still at least one and hopefully the cats will move their attentions elsewhere.

It’s also currently lily flowering time in the pond which brings a fantastic splash of colour to the garden, even if they only last for a couple of days before dying away.

The other flowering plant that I’ve had in the pond is the Coccinea Schizostylis but this flowers quite late in the autumn, even through to winter, something to look forward to.

Right now we’re in a period of very hot, dry weather which typically lasts weeks through the height of Summer. During these periods the water level drops and I’ve topped it up once before with tap water. This isn’t ideal as the nutrients in tap water favour the growth of blanket weed. This is a thickish weed that covers the surface of the pond and needs to be removed, which I do by hand, to stop it becoming a real nuisance.

Adding oxygen into the pond should in theory help the ‘good’ plants and pond wildlife. This can be done by adding naturally oxygenating submerged plants but I’ve also added a non natural solution which is a solar powered aerator.

It bubbles away, creating a kind of frog jacuzzi effect, which I hope they enjoy.