Author of Wild City, Florence Wilkinson, Highlights the benefits of adding water to our gardens
Picture the scene. It’s 26 degrees celsius, but with no cloud cover it feels even hotter. The fields are packed full of exhausted, sun-scorched creatures, all searching for a scrap of shade where there is none. Some stand transfixed, swaying. Others form ever-growing lines, desperate to find water. The festival-goers top up reusable bottles and wet their sequin-clad bucket hats before returning them to their hot heads. It’s Glastonbury Festival 2023, and I’ve finally gained an insight into how our wildlife must be feeling right now.
For weeks my social media feeds have been filled with heartbreaking tales of baby birds perishing in nests, their desperate parents left with no option but to feed them the bone dry seeds they find in garden bird feeders. The earth is hard and impenetrable, leaving the worms and grubs their offspring need to stay hydrated out of reach; assuming they too haven’t succumbed to the heat. I put out some bread soaked in water recently and it disappeared in minutes. You can also try rehydrating mealworms (if only I’d thought of this earlier) as well as sultanas, raisins and currants.
We talk a lot about green space – particularly in urban areas – but we’re in dire need of more ‘blue space’ too. Over the past fifty years we’ve lost an estimated half a million ponds. Farmland ponds have been one of the greatest casualties – as agricultural methods have changed, pond maintenance has fallen off the agenda. Leave a pond to its own devices and in all likelihood it will be gradually taken over by vegetation. Which would be fine, if we hadn’t dredged, drained, culverted, paved and dammed, preventing new waterbodies from forming. All of this has made things much harder for both land and water-dwelling wildlife – and those species that straddle the two.
(Credit: Florence Wilkinson)
Where you do find water, you’ll invariably find life. Water holds within it the promise of hidden worlds, which is why it so often provides a point of transition in cultural mythology – into another realm, another time, another way of being.
And at this time of year, when so many creatures are hiding from the heat, it can be one of the best places to experience wildlife. As a child I was obsessed with the pond in our garden. I’d sit for hours gazing at pond skaters skimming across the water’s surface, aided by water repellent hairs on the bottom of their tiny feet. And water boatman – never has an insect been more aptly named – propelling their boat-shaped bodies using long, paddle-shaped hind legs.
Our pond was alive with frogs, smooth newts and my personal favourite – toads. One of my earliest memories is the feeling of a frog’s cool, tissue-paper-thin skin, clasped in eagerly cupped hands. I quickly learnt how to tell apart the eggs of each species. The mounds of glistening frogspawn with its satisfying wobble. The lines of toad spawn, like strings of pearls. And the newt eggs – hardest to spot, but the folded corner of a leaf is a good giveaway – the female newts wrap them individually in the vegetation to keep them safe from predators.
One of the most miraculous things about water is the speed at which it can be colonised. While researching for my book on urban wildlife, Wild City, I created a tub pond from half an old wine barrel. A dugout pond with gently sloping sides is better still, but with a dog, cat and now a small child, the barrel was our safest bet. I filled it with native pond plants and placed a small log pile around it to help anything that falls in get out again.
Within weeks I spotted dragonflies and damselflies for the first time in our tiny garden in King’s Cross, north London. My neighbour Georges constructed a larger, deeper pond and in less than a year he found a smooth newt hiding under his hydrangea (perhaps it had disembarked at Platform 9 3/4).
More recently, my eye was drawn to an unfamiliar creeping movement among the roses that arch above our pond. I sensed right away that it wasn’t one of our regular host of sparrows. What emerged was sparrow-like in colour, but smaller, with a jauntily cocked tail – a wren! It perched on the edge of the pond and took a few sips before disappearing back into the undergrowth. Bees, too, regularly use our pond as a watering hole, clinging to the side while they use their proboscis – nature’s reusable straw – to take a slurp.
As supplies dwindle, we need to think very carefully about how we use water, and this very much includes in the maintenance of our gardens. Installing a water butt is always a good idea, as is reusing ‘grey water’ from bathroom sinks, showers, bathtubs and washing machines, which can be used to water trees, borders and pot plants. As a last resort, you can use a hose to top up a wildlife pond, but if a hose pipe ban is in force make sure you check with your water company first and remember to only add a bit at a time, because tap water contains chemicals that can be harmful to wildlife in high concentrations. However, during droughts it is often better to let your pond 'dry down', which is completely natural during hot Summers.
So if you’re lucky enough to have a garden and there’s one thing you do for wildlife this summer, just add water. And if you’re feeling the heat, run a hat under the cold tap for a few seconds before putting it on. Genius.
Just by chance I left a bucket out in a corner of my garden containing the dense roots from a dead Maiden Hair Fern and some sludgy soil in hope that it would sprout new growth. The bucket filled with rain water and was left and forgot about. A year later I went to empty the contents of the bucket but quickly abandoned this task when I discovered two. frogs had made home in this miniature swamp and could have possibly hibernated there. I left the bucket as it was but added an extra small shallow pond at the side of the bucket and surrounded it all with small logs and a few rocks. I had accidently created a mini frog environment and two years later it is still providing refuge and home to a number of frogs throughout the year.
I just put a washing up bowl in the ground last year, bought an oxygenating plant which must have had a small water snail or two which keep the water clean. I have had a resident frog now for a year. He hops away from time to time, but comes back.