Let's Make a Mini Wildlife Pond

 Adding water to a garden is a game-changer to attract wildlife. I see that daily in the many birdbaths we have throughout the garden, from tall upright baths to a few saucers on the ground for insects and ground birds, to small hanging baths that small songbirds such as chickadees and nuthatches appreciate. Insects, too are often seen visiting. Butterflies appreciate wet pavement and dragonflies are almost always seen near a water source in my garden. Wanting to take this to the next level, a pond is the ultimate water feature for wildlife. While I'm not ready to commit more time and energy to a large in-ground pond, I thought trying out a small half-barrel would be a good compromise. I watched this video from the Wildfowl Wetlands Trust in the U.K. and was sold, i.e., this was do-able.

While this isn't a major garden project I do hope that it is impactful. I hope to learn a lot. Come along with me as I put together our mini-wildlife pond.

The completed pond with a bird grasping a stem left side, above the log. But I'm ahead of myself. Let us rewind.

The first task was to find a half barrel, and we did so at our local ACE Hardware store for about $30. It is a real wine barrel, so the tannins needed to be leached out. But before we could fill it, it needed to soak for a few days to allow the water to be absorbed by the wood and make a water-tight seal. This was done in the first few days by adding water every day until the level creeped up to the top. Then the weekly leaching/water change process could begin. This was done weekly for about two months until the color of the water was pretty much clear. 

While I don't seem to have a before photo of this area, there was a Lonicera 'Silver Beauty' that had been here for many years. After my Lonicera nitida rip out party (documented in this post) a couple of years ago I was quite ready to remove this, although the Lonicera 'Silver Beauty' itself was never a spreader like the straight species. Still, it was a perfect spot in part shade/part sun along a path that called out for a little water feature.

We hefted the barrel to its spot and didn't worry about leveling. This is when it was filled with regular hose water that was changed weekly. Then when that process was completed and the water didn't have a tannin-ish color to it, I proceeded to permanently place the barrel. Not seen in this pic are three pavers I laid underneath for a bit of stability. The whole area was leveled, of course.

Some of the materials I needed, including bricks, logs and a bit of plastic all gathered from our garden:

An old plant pot six-pack holder that I placed at the bottom for a bit of height and hidey-holes at the bottom for critters.

FM sourced a few nice rocks for this project.

Leveled with pavers underneath and the plastic bit at the bottom.

Having visited Hughe's Water Gardens to do a bit of pond plant shopping, it was time to place the new plants and assemble the whole affair. I bought this, Vallisneria spiralis, which I actually have not ended up using. After doing a bit of online reading it seems this could be a problematic plant if it escaped. It is often used in aquariums and sometimes dumped out. If it escaped into our local waterways (we're next to the Columbia River) it could easily run amok. So it's not included in my pond. There is a native Vallisneria americana that is beneficial, however it wasn't grown at Hughe's. 

Then there is Sagittaria subulata nutans, a fully submerged plant that adds oxygen to the water. Also in the category of oxygenating plants is free-floating Ceratophyllum demersum or hornwort (not pictured). 

Pontederia cordata 'Crown Point' is a marginal plant so slightly submerged.

Sagittaria graminea 'Crushed Ice', another marginal plant, has a lovely variegated leaf and white flowers. I had a couple other plants in the garden already that I wanted to add - Tulbaghia violacea (society garlic) which makes an excellent marginal plant, as well as Acorus gramineus. Just about all of these pond plants are new to me, I know nothing about aquatics so I'm sure the learning curve will be steep. Some may outgrow their little space very quickly and others will die, I'm sure. It's all an experiment after all.

The goal with adding plants is to help keep the water clear and oxygenated and to have a place for dragonflies and other insects to be able to have appropriate places to reproduce. Also, I'm hoping frogs find it and utilize it in this manner. Rocks, gravel, plants, etc. are all places these creatures seek out.

I also bought a couple of baskets to hold the marginal plants in.

And an aquatic potting mix. Apparently, this is a very important part of the recipe. The employees at Hughe's helped me pick this out which has no label on it, it's their mix so you'd have to find out from your local garden center what's best.

Plants in pots received a gravel mulch to help hold in soil, to keep it from floating away and making the water murky.

The total cost for this project was $30 for the barrel and about $100 at Hughe's Water Gardens, though it would have been less had I not purchased the Vallisneria spiralis. The soil was on the pricey side, too. The rest of the materials we had on hand. Total cost was $130.

The bricks are to add height to place potted plants on as they each have varying depths they are to be placed at under the water. I played around until they were all stable and at roughly the correct depth.

The with rain water from our cistern, the barrel was slowly filled making sure to not cause splash that could disrupt the soil.

Nearly full. There will be some settling and will likely need to be topped off from time to time.

Rocks placed around it and a couple in it for birds to stand on and have a drink as well as for other critters to be able to access the pond.

The whole thing.

I played around with a few logs for additional places for birds to perch. Just make sure they don't go in the water as the wood will absorb water and decompose.

After a day or two there was an oily sheen on the surface of the water. Concerned it might be from the plastic six-pack container on the bottom, I disassembled the whole thing and took it out. Everything had to be removed, unfortunately. After reassembly and more rain water from the cistern, the sheen came back. I did a little poking around online and found that it's one of two things - oil or biofilm. You can tell the difference by touching it and if it "shatters" it's biofilm, if it doesn't, it's oil-based. Mine was bio film, thankfully. Nothing to really do about it other than soak it up with a towel from time to time and keep debris from landing on the surface of the pond. In a few days the film decreased, I'm not very worried about it now.

In theory I shouldn't have to change the water at all, rather it settles into its own little self-sustaining ecosystem. I think keeping debris out will be challenging, but a task that we are willing to do.

What about mosquitoes? They are attracted to still water to reproduce, which this is. I did see mosquito larvae before I changed the water. Mosquito dunks, a fairly affordable larvicide that uses Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis to kill larvae, is safe for other wildlife. You just plunk about a quarter of a dunk into the pond about every month or so. Thus far it's been effective. It doesn't kill adult mosquitoes, just the larvae. Plus if we do attract dragonflies (oh please oh please) they do eat mosquito adults and larvae. The dunks are harmless to the dragonflies. If the dragonflies do indeed lay eggs in my pond and the nymphs eat the mosquito larvae, I'm happy to discontinue the mosquito dunks.

I found a rather cool branch in our wood pile that immediately turned into a favorite perch for birds. I have witnessed many birds visiting the little pond, though they took a week or so to find it. Now nuthatches, finches, chickadees, towhees, grosbeaks and who knows what else are using it for a place to take a quick drink. I see evidence of bathing, too. It's been difficult capturing a photo of birds visiting, so I sat on my tush for a half an hour with camera in hand to capture a nuthatch on the rim with I believe a pine siskin on the top of the branch.

We monitor it daily for evidence of insects and frogs, so far just some bees and wasps stopping in for a drink. At the very least, it's been fun having a new little popular spot the birds enjoy. 

What about racoons and other vertebrates? We'll just have to see. We do have skunks, racoons, voles, chipmunks, squirrels, moles, opossums, I'm sure rats, but we figure that if they haven't destroyed the many birdbaths we have they might just leave this alone. It's there for all the critters so if they want to drink out of it, that's great but please, racoons, we don't have any fish in it. This is not a fish pond, that's a whole other level of complexity that I'm not interested in. If they do end up wreaking havok then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Have any of you ever tried this? Do you have any tips/advice? Please do let us know! 

That's a wrap for this week at Chickadee Gardens. As always thank you so much for reading and commenting, we do love hearing from you! As a reminder, I'm currently in the U.K. (for the month of September) and will likely have limited access to my online life, so do forgive if I don't respond to comments right away. Cheers.

For those of you interested in perhaps a small in-ground pond, my garden friend Amy Campion (an amazing insect enthusiast) built one and documented it in her own garden here. She has a wonderful Instagram account, you can find that here.