Let your garden pond colonise naturally

My first garden pond March 2008: no water plants had colonised at this point, but plenty of algae, and the grass Creeping Bent (Agrostis stolonifera) growing in from the edge!

One of the best things about having a garden pond is watching plants and animals arrive.

Usually people wait for animals.

Not many people wait for plants (indeed, I don’t know anyone who has).

So I thought it would be interesting to see whether any plants arrived naturally.

Here’s the pond in March this year when only the edges had been colonised by the damp ground grass Creeping Bent which was already present in the lawn, and which I also introduced as seed.

No proper water plants so far. In fact, it was not until later in the summer this year that we saw the first natural arrival – a really exiting find. More of that later….!

Creeping Bent is just about the commonest wetland plant around ponds in Britain, and also a brilliant animal habitat.