Planting up the new pond

Had a very kind delivery of one of my favourite plants today (many thanks Jim and Sharon!) four beautiful Himalayan Cowslip - they are so fragrant and were immediately visited by various Hoverflies.  We have also added some Water Forget-me-not which will hopefully be covered in newt eggs next spring - excitingly 3 Water Beetles have colonised the pond

Great Diving Beetle larvae antics

Whilst sat next to the pond I heard a bit of a splash and could see a struggle of sorts under the pond weed so grabbed the net and managed to catch a wriggling mass of something! I quickly filled a tray with water and tipped the contents of the net in to be confronted with not a particularly nice event - a Smooth Newt was being attacked by two monsters aka Great Diving Beetle larvae. To be fair a friend had warned us "get the Great Diving Beetles out, they will devour your newts" anyway I took the newt out of the tray hoping to save it but alas it was no more! Now usually we let nature take its course but having cherished our newts since February there was no way these monsters were going back in so a little relocation has taken place.

 

 

 

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Our Garden Pond

Remember this - this picture was taken on the 1st August last year….

this one was taken today just 10 months on….you can see why you should always dig the largest pond you can as it can soon get eaten away by plants.  I am delighted to say that it is teaming with Common Newts which have been egg laying and we hope now to have an invasion of dragonflies!  It hasn’t been a relaxing time watching the pond develop as for the last 3 months we have had to have a large net over the whole area to keep the local Mallard ducks out.  We know from experience that they would eat everything including all plants and newts so it has only been within the last couple of days that we feel safe to remove the net in the hope that the ducks have finished their spring philandering's and have hot footed it back to the Park.

So unfortunately I haven’t been able to take photos through the spring when the Marsh Marigolds, Snake Head Frittilaries, Water Avens and Cuckoo Flower were in full bloom…

We have a bit of a problem with Duck Weed (probably brought in by the Ducks!) and are finding it difficult to control as when we try to net it out it is clinging to pond weed which is full of baby Newts so we are just going to leave it for now until the autumn when all the newts should have left the pond.

Insect life has been busy even with a net on with up to 20 Whirlygig Beetles, Pond Skaters, Great Diving Beetle…
Plants are doing well with most surviving from the old pond and soon we will have Purple Loosestrife, Meadow Sweet, Gypsywort, Flowering Rush, Water Plantain, Water Forget-me-not, Bistort and Water Mint all in flower.

Bistort Superba


The plant we were most happy to see survive was this Royal Fern mixed in with Devils-Bit Scabious.

Pond Species Update

Couldn't believe it this morning first a Humming Bird Hawkmoth feeding in the garden on Buddleia and Geraniums and then a Southern Hawker dragonfly spending 5 minutes hawking up and down the pond catching insects - no photos are they were both far too quick for me!  The garden is also alive with Hover Flies and Bumble Bees which just love the Japanese Anenomies and Rudbeckia.  Our rockery is coming a long well with the first of the plants to flower - a bit of a surprise as it is a white Gentian but it is suppose to be a blue one which should flower is April!

Gentiana Acaulis Rannoch - or not!

Arum Lilly

Japanese Anemone

Rudbeckia

Cosmos

As you can see the pond is beginning to clear of algae with just one central patch left - the rest is slowly starting to clear and we are starting to be able to see the bottom of the pond - clearly we need many more plants in the water to provide oxygen and we still have lots of marginals from the old pond to put back in but its slowly coming along.

Pond landscaping..

..has begun, most of the liner has been hidden under a layer of soil and we are starting to put back everything saved out of the old pond including up to 20 baby Smooth Newts we didn’t know we had.  Planting up will be the next stage and putting some paths in - a stone bench has already gone in to a prime morning position for pond watching. It has only been two days since we filled the pond and already we have had a new species - a Whirligig Beetle which we never had in the old pond probably due to a small water surface area.

one of many diving beetles I have yet to identify!

Smooth Newt Tadpole

An easy one to identify the Great Diving Beetle

The Pond..

Well digging has finished - we got bucket loads of broken glass, rubble and bricks out of the crater and after a lot of levelling and smoothing a layer of sand has gone in…

next went the old underlay from the old pond..

and then the new underlay..

and finally the liner - I think we may have been a little generous with our calculations!

and so to the water, a mixture of rain water, old pond water and tap water it has taken four hours to fill

but is beginning to take shape - landscaping starts tomorrow.

Creating a Garden Pond - progress so far

Well as you can see the new pond is progressing - hampered by old electricity cables and land drains we have managed to dig a new pond 6m x 8m roughly twice the size of the old pond so hopefully twice as much wildlife!  Amazingly only ten minutes ago I kid you not we had an Osprey fly straight over the new pond admittedly at height but what a fantastic garden tick and again minutes after the Osprey went through 2 Crossbills also flew over.

Normanby Nature at last!

Well after 2 years of blogging I have finally managed to put together a post which actually fits in with the blog summary above ie Normanby, Garden and Nature!  So here we go - the first two images was how part of my garden looked last week and the following images show the devastation of the weekend - we have decided the pond isn’t big enough so we have taken out the raised bed and existing pond to make way for the new pond but this has meant we have had to dig up some of the patio which is where the fun begins…..



 Wayne emptying the old pond
…under one of the patio slabs we found this mouse nest - the female shot off and left 8 tiny babies shivering so we collected the nest and babies up and put them into our Bumble Bee box and placed it close by in a border - 5 minutes later the female is back and one by one takes all the babies out of the box and back under the remaining patio, she then continues removing all of the nest out of the box and takes that also under the patio - so all’s well with the mice back to the pond!




For four months now our pond has been invaded and wrecked by two local Mallard ducks from Normanby Park - they have eaten virtually all the plants and probably all the pondlife or so we thought - as Wayne was draining the pond he found this adult Smooth Newt together with 3 Frogs, 1 Toad, 1 Giant Diving Beetle, 7 baby Newts and dozens of Water Snails - everything taken out of the pond has been saved ready to go into the new pond including most of the water, sludge and plants


The last image above was taken of the rescued Newt which is now in a tank - I shall post further images of the new pond as we progress - could be a long job!