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- Apr 6, 2014
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Some photos of our pond in it's 2nd year this Spring. After a Winter of horrendous rainfall, it's full and doing incredibly well. We planted various native species last Summer - various plants have "appeared" in the mean time. It's a liner pond with a fleece + 6" of clay on top (+ a bit of gravel). I was tempted to photoshop out the ropes/twine....but left them in because they are actually quite interesting. We live opposite a flood plane which connects to the River Thames in Oxfordshire - apparently, ancient long boats used to shore up almost exactly in front of our house millennia ago! As a result, ducks and geese are regular visitors (and started to make the pond their home before we even finished it). I read on a website (I think from the US) that by fixing ropes across the pond (or coloured string), this "spooks" the wildfowl (they can't easily land or take off from the pond). It really does work! We do have a handful of Mallard ducks who have worked out how to land vertically (or land on the grass next to the pond and try to gain entrance to it) but generally speaking, it does seem to have put them off. We've put twine around the pond too, and they don't seem to be able to step over it. Given the price of pond plants, lilies etc. this has resulted in a great sigh of relief as we have heard horror stories of people spending thousands of pounds only to have watched geese decimate their creations......We did sadly have to stop one poor duck from nesting right where we were about to start planting - nature is very impatient!