Build a Pond!
06/07/2026
Written by Dave Craven
Build a pond. People don’t always read everything you write so it’s worth starting with that one key point.
I’d always intended to build a pond when we moved into our current house in 2013, but other projects kept delaying it until, in the spring of 2020 while largely locked in our own home in common with the rest of the country, I decided it was the perfect thing to keep my mind healthy.
Ask most people who build a pond what they are hoping for and they will tell of amphibians – frogs, toads, newts. But for me, dragonflies and damselflies were what I really wanted. I have found their lifecycle fascinating since I was a child and really wanted to be able to sit and watch this for myself.
Six years on, it’s been fantastic to see it transform from the very clean and tidy pond after initial construction and planting, to the joyous mess of cover and emergent vegetation we have today.
Pond before and after.
It was remarkable how quickly life arrived, with pond skaters finding it within days, and snails and beetles following soon after.
The long-hoped-for odonata followed that same first year and have been a constant presence since. This did indeed offer the opportunity to spend hours checking on a dragonfly emerging from nymph through to adult dragonfly. Over six years we have had at least a dozen species visit the pond and surrounding foliage.
2026 has been a remarkably good year for damselflies, which I suppose means 2025 was actually a great year for them! It’s a relatively small pond, only a metre or so in diameter, and usually we see 2-3 individuals of any one species.
Normally we see a little pulse of Large Red Damselfly, followed by Common Blue Damselfly, Blue-tailed Damselfly, maybe an Emerald Damselfly. Then the darters take over. This year, after that initial phase of Large Red Damselflies, we have been dominated by Blue-tailed Damselfly and Azure Damselfly with two or three pairs of each egg-laying. So far, bar an earlier emergence of Four-spotted Chaser and Broad-bodied Chasers, dragonflies have been largely absent.
Large Red Damselfly emerging (left) and egg laying (right).
Key in planning for this was to ensure we had plenty of emergent vegetation – aquatic mare’s tail, flag iris, flowering rush, water mint. This gives plenty of opportunity for dragons and damsels to safely climb out when it is time to take that step from nymph to adult.
Emerging Broad-bodied Chaser (left) and freshly emerged Broad-bodied Chaser (right)
Of course, we have also learned that many species don’t care about your careful planting. Chasers have been spotted emerging 10 metres from the pond, climbing up the side of the fence and the shed. The shed was a particularly poor choice as the local blackbird soon spotted it and had a quick breakfast.
We do get non-breeding frogs and toads, in fact as I write this we have a resident small toad hanging around. But it is the invertebrates, and especially the dragonflies and damselflies, that are the stars of the show.
So build a pond, you won’t regret it. Don’t make it neat, tidy, pretty. Lots of emergent vegetation and surrounding undergrowth are your friends.
When you have built your pond, and on the day you realise a nymph has just climbed out of the pond, take a book and a camera and set the day aside to watch the remarkable transformation take place. It’ll be a lifetime highlight.