Pond Ponderings – A Boat for Wildlife

16/06/2023

My Rowing Boat Pond – Sherryl Walters

When we moved to the south coast just before Lockdown 1 we knew we wanted a wildlife garden with a water feature. To enable this, when we moved in, we took away a hedge of viburnum to open up the garden to more light. Being near the coast we began to see quite a lot of boats planted up as flower beds. Thinking outside of the box I thought it would be quirky to do the opposite of what a boat is supposed to do by having the inside full of water rather than water been on the outside!

We found a cheap rowing boat for sale, brought it home, and made some repairs to make it watertight again. I painted it up and placed it in position. With hindsight, I’m not sure I should’ve painted it and it’s not in the best position for a pond as there is no shade so I get quite a lot of weed from the sunshine goodness. We filled it with water, researched pond plants, got a few natives, and plonked them in – literally! Then I sowed wildflower seeds around the pond and garden and waited!

I knew we had nymphs and other pond life quite quickly because I tried to save as many as possible from the weed when I was cleaning it.

Now we see red damselflies, dragonflies, bees and wasps. Birds use it to sit around and my cat likes to drink from it too .

I have recently discovered that we have 3 frogs who seem to like the back portion where we have iris that are steadily multiplying.

Seeing dragonflies emerging has been incredible. We brought the neighbours around with their two young children to watch and marvel at it. They took the exuvia to show and tell at school and their mum is a primary school teacher so she took them for their ‘discovery box’ as well!

I love our front, slightly insane, wildlife garden and I know it brings joy to people passing by. I had no idea how to start this and still don’t know if we are doing it ‘right’ but the bugs and insects, hedgehogs and frogs seem to like it and that is all we could’ve asked for!