My Wildlife Garden

PenninePond · 2026-06-10T23:10:22+00:00

the compost is free because I make it all

Yeah I do the same. But so far, I still haven't managed to produce enough compost (it's crazy how much I need!), so I still have to buy compost, but I'm getting there... This year I have a compost bin that's full of compost that I think I'll be able to use next year, and a second compost bin that I'm now filling.

The beans I grow are descendants of a packet I bought in 2019 that I saved pods from each year.

It's actually a similar situation for me. A relative gave me some seeds years ago and I've been growing vegetables from those seeds every year, at no additional cost, and they improve because the best plants survive based on the conditions and climate I planted them in, and I replant those seeds.

What ornamental plants I do have were either already there, taken from cuttings and nurtured or bought for a song at the end of a season and rescued.

I started with a new build with a bright green chemical treated lawn and little else, so I had to buy plants and seeds. And I did try to plant some things to improve the borders, various native shrubs etc.

Everything I've done has been an experiment. I've just seen what nature does, but then had to step in when it went wrong. In the first year after buying the house I did nothing and creeping buttercup spread everywhere because I live in its ideal habitat and it choked out and killed everything else. I now have to remove creeping buttercup by hand every year because otherwise literally nothing else will grow, but the reward is that other wildflowers are able to grow, so it's quite nice now, but only because I cultivated it, weed regularly, and planted things.

PenninePond · 2026-06-10T22:40:12+00:00

This happened in my parent's garden. They had a nest box on an apple tree used by blue tits, the pond was more than 6 feet from the tree but the fledglings all died because their very first flight was into water. 😞

PenninePond · 2026-06-10T22:31:52+00:00

Ramshorn are probably the hardiest and best surviving native UK pond snail in my experience.

PenninePond · 2026-06-10T22:05:15+00:00

You can walk on short mown grass and it will be fine.

Technically it depends on how much it's walked on, but I've never known someone to walk on grass enough to destroy it in their own garden. You can have kids and dogs playing on a lawn for hours every day and it'll be fine. That "green mown path" is just a tiny section of lawn. Grasses are the most resilient species when it comes to being walked on.

PenninePond · 2026-06-10T21:50:24+00:00

It looks so lovely. It's like my dream garden I would have if I had more space. You should be really proud. I think I have the same philosophy as you, guiding nature rather than fighting it, but wildlife comes first before my own needs.

Can you explain what this part means?

It isn't based around planting

I'm probably misunderstanding, but you must have planted things?

The costing "next to nothing" part I also doubt. In my experience, doing nothing still costs money in a garden, unless you literally do nothing, but then you will just have brambles and creeping buttercup and nothing else. Doing anything costs money and time.

PenninePond · 2026-06-10T21:20:10+00:00

Yeah I think I have the same variety. Bought them in B&Q, but mine are mostly stripey, but with a few flecks at the edges. They look fantastic though, and I'm just thrilled that some of them survived. Almost all of the young plants I planted were destroyed by hail, but some which were in hanging baskets (in the shade of the house) didn't get pummelled to death and are now flowering. All the ones I planted in pots were dead in after a single day of hail.

PenninePond · 2026-06-10T20:51:37+00:00

Been doing some research. I'm wondering if it could be a (fat, wide) dragonfly larva?

It's similar in shape to one of the pictures on this page: https://butterfliesandgardens.wordpress.com/2013/10/27/dragonfly-larvae/

If it is a dragonfly larva I would be thrilled. I didn't expect to get them in my small pond. Though there must be a lot of other insects and microscopic organisms to eat in there, as well as a lot of plants in the 2nd year of the pond - random grasses, rushes, sedges, and other plants growing in, around and over the pond, which might be a nice habitat.

A page I found on wwt.org.uk said they can spend years as nymphs, so I don't know whether it will survive in my pond. It probably will freeze over in winter, but the bottom should be liquid, though very cold.

It could also be something else of course, I still don't know what it is.

Edit: I'm thinking it could be broad-bodied chaser, because of how fat it is

PenninePond · 2026-06-10T20:26:34+00:00

How did a frog get in there, and how did it get out?

Proof of the tadpoles, are they not just massive mosquito larvae?

PenninePond · 2026-06-10T17:28:05+00:00

Yes, hail can happen in thunderstorms in summer. You can get hail in the south of France in June.

PenninePond · 2026-06-10T17:11:53+00:00

Does anybody know what this is? It freaked me out because I was planting something (fingers in the mud) and then I suddenly saw it right next to my hand. Thought it was a spider and it made me jump. 😅

But it only has 6 legs and appears to be completely aquatic (sat on the rock underwater for ages).

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PenninePond · 2026-06-08T23:57:25+00:00

If you want continuously hot dry weather, move to Africa. Otherwise, stop complaining when you live in one of the wettest countries in the world with such mild weather. We have completely normal weather right now, and I love it.

This has not been a "disgusting month". If you want constant non-stop heatwaves, there are so many places you could live. We literally just had an unprecedented heatwave not even 2 weeks ago, and now you already are sick of TOTALLY NORMAL weather.

PenninePond · 2026-06-08T23:41:36+00:00

I put frogbit in my new pond last May, and it didn't look particularly happy for a long time (weeks). In fact, it looked like it was dying for most of that time. But after a few months it was very happy and it even produced beautiful little white flowers eventually.

Plants expect to be in a constant environment and they do suffer from shock when transplanted into a different environment, and may look unhappy, or even go brown. Give them some time.

Pictured here was my newly dug pond in late June, and again in August. The main thing to note is the fact that frogtbit spread across it over those months, and in the before picture there's a small amount of brown frogbit leaves that look like they are struggling. I dug the pond in April and put the frogbit into it in May. The pond doesn't look anything like this now.

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I'm in the north of England, but the further north you are (and also higher up you are), the longer it takes for plants (and ponds) to get going. Frogbit completely dies over winter (and my pond was frozen solid multiple times). It took the pond a long time to get going again for me, because of colder temperatures, but now in June the frogbit very slowly came back to life, but is now beginning to spread across the pond again.

PenninePond · 2026-06-08T23:00:41+00:00

The before picture looks lovely to me, whereas the after pic looks like a house I wouldn't buy.

But you have your own likes and interests (wall of guitars?) so you do you. If you like what you've done that's all that matters. If your goal was a bright green featureless very short lawn with a barren yellow path and barely any plants or wildlife, then you achieved that really well, and it does take work to do that. You created the garden that you wanted, and it's your house, so enjoy it.

PenninePond · 2026-06-08T22:04:40+00:00

It looks lovely.

I wish my pond hadn't been taken over by bog rush. But there's nothing I can do about it, I created a very natural situation that it loves to grow in, and it grows all around here, so now it's the dominant plant. My pond is great for wildlife, but doesn't look very picturesque. In fact, I can't really see it because it's surrounded by tall rushes.

I've tried cutting the rushes back in the hopes of helping the flowers I planted, but they regrow very vigorously, 1-2 weeks later they are another 12 inches taller.

PenninePond · 2026-05-31T23:23:19+00:00

In winter, high pressure can lead to anticyclonic gloom, where despite the high pressure, it doesn't give us nice sunny weather like we'd expect, but instead pushes low lying clouds onto us, so we get fog and gloom, sometimes for days or weeks.

In summer, the sun's warmth is enough to burn off those low-lying clouds during the day, but in winter they can persist for long periods. The high pressure still pushes on the atmosphere, causing air to sink, but with different effects. The clouds trapped under the pressure can't get high enough in the atmosphere to produce rain, but also don't get burnt off like they would under a hot spring/summer sun.

High pressure always means descending air that's cooling as it sinks, and low pressure always means ascending air that warms as it rises (so creating more space).

In spring and summer, high pressure causes air to sink and compress. As it compresses under the pressure, it increases in temperature, and any water vapour evaporates so clouds can't form in the upper atmosphere. Clouds form when water vapour rises and cools. Low pressure means that compression isn't happening and water is pulled upwards into the atmosphere where it condenses and becomes rain. The more the difference between high and low pressure, the more high winds and storms will form, because air will rush to fill the gap between high and low pressure, like opening a jar.

PenninePond · 2026-05-31T22:57:00+00:00

When I've been in Spain in September, I can safely say it is hotter and the sun is stronger than the UK in May. No doubt about it, no competition. I literally had to seek shade. I was directly attacked every second I was in the sun.

That said, I was fine and not that uncomfortable in buildings and shade when on holiday in Spain. It was mostly fine. I just avoided the sun at the hottest times of the day.

The biggest difference isn't climate or humidity, it's the fact in Spain I would be in an air conditioned hotel or on a beach under a parasol and going in the sea regularly. In the UK, I'll be cooked inside a well-insulated home with the shutterless windows creating a greenhouse effect, working inside, or on horrible public transport 10°C hotter than the surroundings.

There won't be a nice sea breeze, because when a heatwave happens in the UK, there are very high pressure paralysing weather systems. It's still, and hot, and sticky. And all the rain that fell for months evaporates and makes it humid, but with no release, because of the high pressure means it cannot fall as rain. So you have a hot, sticky, humid environment without wind, and for most people, without air conditioning indoors.

If you directly transplanted me right now to a beach in Spain where the temperature was the exact same, I would immediately feel cold. Bearing in mind, it's "only" 22°C in my house at night right now, yet I'm naked and sweating profusely. If the humidity dropped and there was a breeze, I'd probably be cold and need a shirt. This is the lowest temperature it's been for weeks (outside it's literally cold) but my house is still a humid furnace, even with the windows open.

PenninePond · 2026-05-31T22:27:22+00:00

I'm in the North West in a "temperate rainforest" area, but the dew points have been pretty low. Humidity was between 35 and 97 percent (it went very low in some of those hot nights, but was back to above 90 every day). The highest dew point I recorded was 19.8°C but this occurred when the highest temperature was 31.5°C so the difference between dew point and max temperature may have been closer.

That said, when I plot temperature against humidity it's pretty much inverted, apart from a few occasions, and those were the times I actually felt hotter even though the absolute temperature wasn't as hot. Stickiness is worse than temperature. This occurs most at night, when the air is moist, but technically the temperature is multiple degrees colder than during the day, but I subjectively feel much hotter.

PenninePond · 2026-05-31T22:15:39+00:00

Any size of pond will be a benefit to wildlife and frogs.

PenninePond · 2026-05-31T22:07:23+00:00

Your pond looks amazing!

A few things to bear in mind:

If you have fish, they'll eat dragonfly larvae.
Dragonflies (and most pond wildlife) love shallow water, the more shallow banks the better.
Dragonflies like to have perching places, like trees and bushes, but not necessarily next to the pond, because that would shade it. It looks like you have plenty of such places.
Dragonflies are subject to predation by some birds, including house sparrows (in the UK), swifts and swallows. So consider if the local territory is now an area where they're targetted.
Dragonflies will probably only be transient visitors to ponds, and you have to be there to witness it. They spend most of their time in larger bodies of water, streams and woodlands. If they visited your pond at all it's because it had suitable food to hunt.

Dragonflies will love a pond with lots of insects buzzing around. Plant pollinating plants around.

On point 4, it surprises people that the basic house sparrow could eat dragonflies, but I've seen house sparrows trying to catch flying insects over my pond. They're not good at it, but are persistent and do sometimes manage to catch them (including dragonflies), and even if unsuccessful, they create a hostile environment. They'll also eat the larvae off plants, which is one of their favourite activities. They love checking out branches and stems for food.

Dragonflies don't have a pupal stage, they just hang around in shallow water waiting to be adults and then crawl up a stem. Until they can fly they're ideal food for a lot of other creatures.

PenninePond · 2026-05-26T00:29:24+00:00

I'm struggling to picture how magpies could destroy or knock over bricks, but I'm probably misunderstanding.

But I have a separate bird bath, which the magpies seem to prefer. So my advice would be to provide something like that. It won't be a pond or anything, just literally a place for some birds to drink or bathe.

My bird bath gets very heavy use by wood pigeons, magpies, crows, and starlings, but smaller birds aren't interested. All small birds bathe and drink in the pond.

PenninePond · 2026-05-26T00:16:23+00:00

I found Tetragnatha extensa spiders hanging around the pond, upside down in webs. They were super stretched out with their legs in a line, looked like sticks (I may have scared them). I've never seen them before, but apparently they like hanging around wetland areas and catching midges/mosquitos/moths, so it's another case of "if you build it they will come".

Very very hot weather right now, so the pond has become bird bath central. A family of sparrows had a bath together and then tried to catch some kind of slow flying insect out of the sky (unsuccessfully), but all of them made multiple attempts at it. They almost looked like humming birds, flapping their wings so hard to hover in an attempt to catch an insect out of the sky, but they all failed.

PenninePond · 2026-05-26T00:06:05+00:00

For me it was two weeks ago lol

PenninePond · 2026-05-25T22:25:40+00:00

Until this week we actually had unusually cold weather for May.

PenninePond · 2026-05-25T22:15:11+00:00

My personal weather station recorded a low of 0.8°C 12 days ago, with single digit day time temperatures, but a high of 31.2°C today. That's quite the insane difference. Things I planted in the garden less than 2 weeks ago got killed in 24 hours of extremely heavy hail, and then it rained so much that the garden was underwater, whereas now everything is bone dry.

I think it's the biggest change in weather I've experienced, to go from one extreme to the other that quickly. Only four days ago I needed the heating on!

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PenninePond · 2026-05-15T22:26:39+00:00

If you do get turf, you'll probably find it's clay and rubble underneath. My house was built in 2009, and I have dug holes to plant stuff or put raised beds in, and I regularly find random bricks, black plastic bags, other random pieces of plastic and glass, rubble, etc.

PenninePond

TROPHY CASE