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I've been building, not so much a garden pond, as a playground pond. And the first problem with playgrounds is that they are all-over tarmac. The obvious site for Ivydale Primary School's new pond was a sunny, but extremely bleak corner next

she hadn't dashed off into the depths. Today, though, when I nip out into the cold wilderness of my garden to have a little look around, I find there is a thin layer of ice on the pond.The rational part of me suspects that even though our pond is very

bit of gardening. I've just had another look at the RSPB Homes for Wildlife web pages and see that September is the best month for clearing some blanket weed off of the garden pond. How apposite, I'd noticed the pond was looking rather green and cloudy

, and for which I do not need to download the wrong sort of software: the pond.Early this summer it sprung a leak and the water dropped 30 centimetres leaving an unsightly fringe of stained black plastic liner. I've been meaning to get round to it for months. Now

.Although we've had frogs and toads in the garden for years, they've never bred successfully, and we've never had tadpoles in our small pond. I'm hoping the newts will have better luck. Since I re-made the pond after its leak last year, we've not had much else

Our first barbecue of the season was Sunday 3 May, so much pottering about in the garden sunshine. It's all happening out there now. Last week there were 13 newts in the pond, we couldn't move for holly blues and then the swifts were back. It

from memory I’d have to say that frogs outnumber toads 10 to one.Whenever I speak to anyone about frogs or toads, they are always slightly amazed that their pond-free garden should contain them. But, of course, amphibians only need a pond during

One of our cats sat motionless on the edge of the pond today, head drooped down almost touching the water as if he were asleep. But the occasional tic gave him away: he was watching newts. The bright sunshine lit up a corner of our triangular pond

I've dredged up from the back of my mind a statistic - something like 1 in 25 UK gardens with a pond will have a grass snake in it. Mine, unfortunately, is one of the 24 others without this lovely and fascinating reptile. So when I heard that a

.Contrary to popular misconception, toads and frogs actually spend very little time in and around ponds - usually when they are mating and spawning in February, March and April. Mostly, like those I had so rudely disturbed on Saturday, they roam far and wide