A Small Pond with a Big Job to Do

Britain has lost a remarkable number of its ponds over the past century — filled in, drained, or simply left to scrub over. That makes the modest pond at the bottom of your garden far more valuable than it looks. A well-made garden pond can support all three of our common newts, both the common frog and the common toad, plus dragonflies, damselflies and a whole raft of invertebrates. You do not need acres of land, either. Even a pond of a couple of square metres, sited in partial shade with plenty of native plants, will be found by amphibians within a season or two.

Telling Frogs from Toads

The common frog is smooth-skinned and moist, olive, brown or occasionally yellowish, with a dark patch behind the eye and long, powerful hind legs. It hops, and it breeds early — spawn often appears in the south-west from January, and further north by March. Frog spawn is laid in rounded clumps, like a handful of jelly with black dots suspended throughout.

The common toad is drier and warty, olive-brown to grey, with a squat body, short legs and coppery eyes with horizontal pupils. Toads walk or make short, shuffling hops rather than leaping. They arrive at ponds a little later, usually March to April, and their spawn is unmistakable: long double strings of jelly wound through the pondweed.

There is one more difference worth knowing. Toads are far more faithful to a particular pond, and if you have them you are probably part of a chain of gardens used by the same population for decades. Never move spawn or adults between ponds — it spreads disease and muddles local genetics.

Newts: The Quiet Residents

Smooth, palmate and great crested newts all turn up in gardens, though the great crested is heavily protected and it is an offence to disturb or handle one without a licence. If you suspect you have them, enjoy them from a distance and take advice before doing any pond work.

Smooth newts are the ones most often seen. In spring, males develop a wavy crest and a spotted belly, and they perform a display, fanning their tail towards the female. Newt eggs are laid singly, each wrapped carefully in the fold of a leaf — usually curled pondweed, water forget-me-not or floating sweet-grass. If you unfold a leaf and find a single pale egg, you have newts.

Outside the breeding season, newts leave the water and live in damp grass, log piles, stone walls and the shelter of long vegetation. A pond with a tidy, close-mown surround is far less useful than one with a scruffy corner.

Looking Without Harming

Amphibians have permeable skin and breathe partly through it, which makes them unusually sensitive to anything on your hands. The golden rules are simple.

• Do not handle them unless you must. If one needs moving, wet your hands first and keep contact brief — dry hands and warm skin do real damage.
• Never use soap, sunscreen, insect repellent or hand gel before pond dipping. Rinse your hands in pond water instead.
• Use a white tray rather than a bucket, and return everything to the same spot within a few minutes.
• Disinfect nets and boots between ponds, and never move spawn, tadpoles or pond plants from one site to another.
• Check the water for frogs and newts before strimming the margins or lifting netting and plant pots.

The best times to look are mild, damp evenings from February to May, and after dark with a torch — a slow walk around the edge will often reveal frogs sitting up in the shallows and newts drifting among the weed.

Keeping the Pond in Good Heart

Fish and amphibians rarely mix well. Even small fish will eat spawn and tadpoles, so if you want a wildlife pond, either leave fish out altogether or keep the pond large and heavily planted.

A few design features make an enormous difference:

• A shallow, gently sloping beach on at least one side, so young frogs and newts can climb out easily.
• Native oxygenators such as hornwort and water starwort, plus marginals like water mint and purple loosestrife.
• Some open water — amphibians need it for spawning, and it helps stop blanketweed taking over still, sunlit shallows.
• Long grass, log piles and loose stone nearby to act as a summer refuge.

Do your tidying in early autumn rather than spring, when tadpoles and newt larvae are still developing. Lift weed gently, leave it on the pond edge for a day so anything caught up can crawl back, and only ever clear a third to a half of the pond at once. In winter, leave the bottom alone — frogs often overwinter in the silt, and disturbing it can kill them.

It is also worth jotting down what you see and when: the first spawn date, the first newt, the number of froglets leaving in summer. Passing those notes to your county records centre genuinely helps fill gaps in national data, and it turns a pleasant garden pond into a small piece of real citizen science.