Wildlife Pond questions!

Well, there's things like Caltha [Marsh Marigold] which, given the right conditions, will overhand and trail into the water. Then to keep it natural there's Lychins, Cardamine and Guem, Hypericum, Lobeiia, Mimulus, Mentha [Water Mint] and a few others, but the point is that they will grow over and trail into the pond. One thing, I don't know whether you've got the space for making a small bog garden right beside the pond, but if you can, scoop a space out and then line it with, say a compost bag cut to size with several holes in it to drain some water out, then cover it with ordinary soil and plant what you want into it. Not only will the plants trail into the water helping some wild life to get out of the pond but it will also provide cover and attract more wild life.
The last suggestion is drop some oxygenator weed into the pond which will extract nutrients out of the water keeping it clear and free from algae.

This is my pond which, hopefully, is in the natural style. On your right is the bog garden although constructed differently to my above suggestion. To the rear are plants planted in containers [marginal plants] and to your left are plants planted in soil.




Even on a small scale it will work

 

You know more about Nature and wild life than I ever will, Ziggy!!!, so keep your coat on the hook and drink your tea!!

 

Well, Stacy, if you can find a friend who has frog spawn in his post next year beg some of him as that will speed things up. I dug my pond in 93 and while seeing plenty of wild life never saw a frog until this year.
Having said that my garden fences are very high and there are no spaces between the posts and fences [to keep my cats in] so even small wild life have problems getting in. I found spawn on my oxygenating weed this Spring to my surprise and scooped two jugfuls out which are now in 2 small pools. I did that because I have fish in the pool and tadpoles make tasty snacks although some will hide and survive. I think the spawn came from a surviving tadpole when I "borrowed" some from my sister a couple of years ago.

Just by coincidence my cat, Jenny, has just brought in a Frog unharmed to show me.....she doesn't touch birds or the like so I was surprised to see her with a frog looking unamused in her mouth. I don't think she seen one before. She got a wagging finger in front of her face and the frog is now back, unharmed, into the garden.

 

Yeah, I'm not going to let my cat lick me face for a while. She obviously hadn't kissed it as it didn't look at all pleased!!