What Wildlife NeedsĮDGING – Wildlife like frogs and salamanders need a slope to get out of the water. I won’t discuss the technical aspects of building a pond because there are a lot of resources for how to plan and construct them on the ‘ Rain Gardens & Wildlife Ponds‘ resource page. Because I didn’t need to worry about fish I did not need pumps or filters, which can kill small invertebrates. A pond designed for wildlife will have varying depths, different substrates, a diversity of plants and various types of edges.īecause my goal was to create a pond for dragonflies and other aquatic invertebrates, I opted for no fish, which may eat the invertebrates. The single biggest concept to successful wildlife habitat, including a pond, is diversity. Once the pond was finished, it was immediately populated with various aquatic invertebrates and over the two years since, I’ve intently watched and monitored the pond and it only gets better each year. The deck was a huge wasted space and a hideout for rats so about three years ago we began slowly dismantling it and then began the backbreaking work of digging out the pond and installing it. When we moved in, the backyard was 2/3 lawn with a lone forsythia, and 1/3 deck. Over the years, dragons had visited the yard, usually females who would rest on the fence or on a branch for a time, or darners and saddlebags cruising over the neighborhood, but I wanted to offer habitat for the full life cycle of the dragon. I have long been fascinated by dragonflies (they will feature in a chapter in my upcoming book Nature Obscura: A City’s Hidden Natural World), and I wanted to bring them to my own backyard so I could watch them. The birds and the bees are great, but what I’ve wanted since I started transforming a featureless backyard into wildlife habitat, was a pond.
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