Wildlife Pond Help

We’ve just moved into a new house and there’s a deep wildlife pond surrounded by trees and geraniums around the edge. There’s only 1 plant in the pond at the moment and a resident newt, however the water is very murky and doesn’t seem to have much life at all. Do we need to clean the pond? Is there something we can use to help clear the water? Should we just start adding plants? Do we need oxygenating plants?
We don’t want to keep fish we just want to maintain a nice natural pond for wildlife.
Please help.

 

If you have no oxygenating plants the water will be green and you will struggle to clear it
I think you can over clean a wildlife pond, it needs a layer of mud in the bottom for insects to breed.
What is the plant you have and is the water brown or green.

 

Iris,water lilies,bull rush,marsh marigolds,duck weed are good imho.
A fountain would be good to get some oxygen in there quickly.
Ive got orfe,wildlife,plants,fountain,uv, pumps . All seem to be happy .
A bucket of water taken from a "healthy" pond may help too .

 

I have had duck weed (Lemna) in all of my 3 ponds (one specifically for wildlife) and it was an absolute horror, so bad I took out the 2 ornamental ones as it was impossible for me to control. They were only small ponds (looked to be about the same size as OP) but it completely covered the surface making it look like a swamp and stops the light reaching the submerged plants. It was introduced on plants that friends gave me from their own ponds. I had a good UV filtratration system but it didn't help.

Blackstart

 

My pond has duck weed, it stops the water turning green, but like weeds in the garden you have to control it.
I just occasionally use a spray head on the hose and push it all up one end of the pond then scoop as much as I can out, of course some is always left, you never eliminate it.
But I dont want to, it keeps the water clear at a time when the water is too cold for the oxygenating plants to be growing.
My main oxygenator is Elodea, grows like the clappers once the water warms up, and I have to remove lots of that in late summer.
In late summer the duck weed is pretty much unnoticeable, by then it has done its job and the water nutrients are pretty low.

 

Yeh, garden hose clears it 90%. Beasties crawl out when its dumped at the side then into the compost bin,sorted.