Garden pond
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A garden pond is a
water feature In landscape architecture and garden design, a water feature is one or more items from a range of fountains, jeux d'eau, pools, ponds, rills, artificial waterfalls, and streams. Before the 18th century they were usually powered by gravity, ...
constructed in a
garden A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate bot ...
or designed landscape, normally for aesthetic purposes, to provide
wildlife Wildlife refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous to game: those birds and mammals that were hunted ...
habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...
, or for swimming.


Habitat

Garden ponds can be excellent wildlife habitats, and can make a contribution to the protection of freshwater wildlife. Invertebrate animals such as
dragonflies A dragonfly is a flying insect belonging to the infraorder Anisoptera below the order Odonata. About 3,000 extant species of true dragonfly are known. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat threa ...
and
water beetle A water beetle is a generalized name for any beetle that is adapted to living in water at any point in its life cycle. Most water beetles can only live in fresh water, with a few marine species that live in the intertidal zone or littoral zone. Th ...
s, and amphibians can colonise new ponds quickly. Garden pond owners have the potential to make many original and valuable observations about the ecology of small waterbodies, which garden ponds replicate. Garden ponds also cause problems. In particular, garden ponds can be pathways for the spread of invasive non-native plants. In the UK the non-native species ''
Crassula helmsii ''Crassula helmsii'', known as swamp stonecrop or New Zealand pigmyweed, is an aquatic or semiterrestrial species of succulent plant in the family Crassulaceae The Crassulaceae (from Latin ''crassus'', thick), also known as the stonecrop fam ...
'' and ''
Myriophyllum aquaticum ''Myriophyllum aquaticum'' is a flowering plant, a vascular dicot, commonly called parrot's-feather and parrot feather watermilfoil. Morphology and reproduction Parrot feather is a perennial plant. Parrot feather gets its name from its feather-l ...
'', which cause considerable practical problems in protecting freshwaters, are both escaped invasive species from garden ponds.


Conditions

Ponds may be created by natural processes or by people; however, the origin of the hole in the ground makes little difference to the kind of wildlife that will be found in the pond. Much more important is whether the pond is
polluted Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of any substance (solid, liquid, or gas) or energy (such as radioactivity, heat, sound, or light). Pollutants, the ...
or clean, how close it is to other wetlands and its depth, particularly whether it dries out from time to time and how many fish (if any) there are. Naturally, ponds vary more in their physical and chemical conditions from day to day, and even during the day, than other freshwaters, like rivers. People often install pumps in garden ponds to counter these natural tendencies, particularly to maintain higher levels of dissolved oxygen: although this is probably not necessary for wildlife generally, it may be essential to keep fish in a small pond. For ponds with polluted nutrient-rich tapwater added to them, filters can be used to reduce the abundance of algae.


Water supply and loss

Ponds outside of gardens are fed by four main water sources:
rain Rain is water droplets that have condensed from atmospheric water vapor and then fall under gravity. Rain is a major component of the water cycle and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the Earth. It provides water ...
, inflows (springs and streams), surface runoff, and
groundwater Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated ...
. The wildlife value of ponds is greatly affected by the extent to which these water sources are unpolluted. Garden ponds are generally not fed by inflows or groundwater, except in the larger and rural gardens. Usually the pond will be filled by a combination of tap water, rainwater, and surface runoff – and lost to evaporation. In soils which lack natural
clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...
, additional water loss to
drainage Drainage is the natural or artificial removal of a surface's water and sub-surface water from an area with excess of water. The internal drainage of most agricultural soils is good enough to prevent severe waterlogging (anaerobic condition ...
and
permeation In physics and engineering, permeation (also called imbuing) is the penetration of a permeate (a fluid such as a liquid, gas, or vapor) through a solid. It is directly related to the concentration gradient of the permeate, a material's intrins ...
is prevented by a liner.
Pond liner A pond liner is an impermeable geomembrane used for retention of liquids, including the lining of reservoirs, retention basins, hazardous and nonhazardous surface impoundments, garden ponds and artificial streams in parks and gardens. Install ...
s are PVC or EPDM foils that are placed between the soil of the pond bed and the water. Liners can also be made from puddled clay, and ponds on free-draining soils can even be self-sealing with fine sediments washed into the pond. ;Seasonal ponds One can make a garden pond /
koi pond Koi ponds are ponds used for holding koi carp, usually as part of a garden. Koi ponds can be designed specifically to promote health and growth of the Nishikigoi or Japanese Ornamental Carp. Koi ponds or lakes are a traditional feature of Jap ...
that generally ranges in size from 150 gallons to around 10,000 gallons. However, if evaporation exceeds the amount of water added, the pond may dry out during summer. This is not harmful biologically because many freshwater plants and animals (perhaps half of all species) are well adapted to periods of
drought A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D.  Jiang, A.  Khan, W.  Pokam Mba, D.  Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...
, and worldwide so-called ' temporary ponds' (ponds which usually dry out once a year) are an important natural habitat type. However, in a garden, a pond which dries out in summer may be a bit disappointing for the owner since this is the time when most people will be spending time enjoying their pond. And of course some animals, particularly fish, cannot survive periods of drought. Amphibians, on the other hand, often benefit from ponds which dry out because this removes fish, the major predators of
tadpole A tadpole is the larval stage in the biological life cycle of an amphibian. Most tadpoles are fully aquatic, though some species of amphibians have tadpoles that are terrestrial. Tadpoles have some fish-like features that may not be found ...
s and newtpoles and, provided the larvae emerge before the pond dries out, the drought presents no problems for the amphibians.


Natural ponds, natural pools and swimming ponds

Ponds or swimming ponds can be constructed by an isolating membrane or membranes or (on an organic model sometimes called natural pools) contained by layer of loam. For all variants no chemicals or devices disinfect or maintain water, the water is instead cleared through use of biological filters, aquatic plants or other
organisms used in water purification Most organisms involved in water purification originate from the waste, wastewater or water stream itself or arrive as resting spore of some form from the atmosphere. In a very few cases, mostly associated with constructed wetlands, specific orga ...
(
zooplankton Zooplankton are the animal component of the planktonic community ("zoo" comes from the Greek word for ''animal''). Plankton are aquatic organisms that are unable to swim effectively against currents, and consequently drift or are carried along by ...
). The first such pools were built in the early 1980s in
Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
, where they are known as ''"Schwimmteiche"''. The first was built by Werner Gamerith and Richard Weixler in Gamerith's private garden in the 1980s. The market slowly grew, and by 2016 there were around 20,000 such swimming ponds in Europe. The first public swimming pool in North America built and maintained in this way, was finished at Webber Park in
Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...
in 2015. An organization called Die Internationale Organisation für naturnahe Badegewässer sets standards for such pools.


See also

* Biotope *
Koi pond Koi ponds are ponds used for holding koi carp, usually as part of a garden. Koi ponds can be designed specifically to promote health and growth of the Nishikigoi or Japanese Ornamental Carp. Koi ponds or lakes are a traditional feature of Jap ...
*
Water garden Water garden or aquatic garden, is a term sometimes used for gardens, or parts of gardens, where any type of water feature is a principal or dominant element. The primary focus is on plants, but they will sometimes also house waterfowl, or orn ...


References


Further reading

* {{Authority control Garden features Outdoor recreation Ponds Bodies of water