Pond Tips – Habitats

Here are some photos of one of our recent habitat creation jobs for Froglife.

These two pools have Bentomat liners under them, not our usual EPDM liner. Another unusual element for us is that they are not planted. In some ways this is the ideal thing to do for a wildlife pool. The ponds will colonise naturally over time and this will allow the natural succession of plants to occur and therefore the same will happen with the invertebrate species.

Most of the time you can’t leave pools with no plants as they tend to look unsightly and are much more likely to have algal blooms. You also tend to get murky water (as here) as there are no marginal plants to prevent soil being washed in from the banks. A combination of lots of submerged plants and marginals trap the soil and it clears fairly quickly. The speed with which this happens also depends on the soil type. Clay based soils have very fine particles, which stay suspended for much longer than sandy loams. So these pools will look odd for a while, but are very valuable new habitats.

If you would like more information on creating your own pool or pond, please get in touch.