Wildlife Pond:

Being next to woodland and fields, our first attempt at growing veg lasted a few days before the midnight marauders had munched their way through the delicate tasty shoots leaving their slimy silver trails as proof of their visit. What we needed was an organic and natural way of keeping on top of the problem, so we thought a pond might attract hungry frogs and toads.

A quick trawl through some builders skips and we came up trumps with a whole stack of damp proof membrane, ideal as our pond liner. I had an idea of how I wanted it to look and not one to plan and mark things out, I just started to dig.

It's not too deep, only about a foot as we have young children, and has naturalised well (this picture was taken only a week after it was built/dug.

The Millstone was our very first Freecycle acquisition, which we picked up from a lovely bloke near Dunsfold, the plants have all been donated.

We bought two fish, Red Rudd, as we didn't want any goldfish or Koi (they look naff) but I never saw them. I did see a piece of bread moving to the bottom of the pond, but not the fish pinching it. It now looks as though they have been removed by our cat, as when clearing it out there was no sign of them, and they have not been seen floating belly up.

So, we will give up on the fish, their not really suitable for a wildlife pond as they eat frog spawn, and stick to just being a haven for Dragonflies, frogs and toads.