What if we created 23 Million Mini Ponds? 

started digging foundations for a garage up here in scotland this winter, but because of how wet its been this year, all ive got to show for it is a muddy flooded trench. you know whats happened from having that in the garden? the bees have moved in. a bunch of solitery bees and social bees have come and either made little burrows in the mud, or they used it as a watering hole when its dried up to just a consistent muddy puddle at the bottom. its genuinely been amazing how many there have been, and because theyre busy getting water or digging, you can just go and sit there surrounded by them. makes me really want to dig another trench of sorts that wont become a concrete floor for the plants and animals to enjoy. Our dog might have to stay on the leash in the garden for a while but, might still be a nice addition?

I made a mini pond in my back garden 4 weeks ago and it already has a newt in it!

We're adding rain garden concepts to our garden to protect the house. Which means temporary ponds and wetlands to let that rainwater to slowly soak into our clay heavy land. Adding native plants, bushes and trees to help control it. And were making one of them acidic pine and brush one. Pionies, blueberries, hard grasses & lingonberries hopefully will love it. Which means variety, flowers, food, shelter and access to water to critters. I'm excited about the native irises.

It's the first year our landlords are letting us grow the garden wild and it's also the first year we have a blackbird nesting in the rhododendrons :D Your videos are so inspiring ❤

last year i started my own project making a 2 by 3 meter pond. took it a bit further with making a dead hedge and sowing native flower seeds.

Dug a pond in my garden last summer: it's amazing. Seen damselflies mating and ovipositing, birds bathing in it. I was overjoyed to see smooth newts had found it this spring and my garden toads are also loving it. Have huge numbers of beetles in there, I think I've seen some mayfly larvae and hoping that the local dragonflies will spot it soon too!

Love the 23million pond idea, I went pond mad during lock down, made a few container ponds out of 25ltr plastic Jerry cans and put them in different locations to see what species appeared and preffered each location. Ive moved house a few times since and drain them to about 20% to make them movable and discovered 2 smooth newts in them which i released before moving. I now have 4 container ponds, each different and interesting in their own way. Working on number 5 at the moment but this is going to be a big 5 x 3m oval in the allotment.

I JUST put a mini pond in a wine barrel in my backyard. Partly because of your videos. So keep it up! I don't worry about mosquitoes because the dragonflies and damselflies eat them.

the vast ocean is made of little drops...little bits for nature go a long way. can't wait to start my own pond. I already started planting oaks and pines near my future home, along many other species. a pond will be the next project, alongside insect hotels and log piles and rock piles for lizards and hedgehogs. if you love nature, it gives you joy and strength

great initiative! I added a solar air pump to mine and very importantly, dragon fly larvae , to eat the mosquitos!

Small container ponds have been my youtube hyperfocus while I've been laid up with a back injury, but now that I'm starting to recover, I'm raring to get started on setting a couple up around the edges of my property. I'm also looking into a way to make a butterfly puddling spot, a bird bath, and a bee watering spot! I just started a compost pile and planted a few more native plants and I'm feeling really good about the progress I've made on my yard in just 1 1/2 years of living here 😊

I have around a dozen container ponds made out of various buckets scattered about my garden, with 3 more buckets that are mini 'marsh gardens' plus a larger, much deeper, proper pond under construction (but already has at least 5 frogs and a newt living in the collected rainwater at the bottom). I don't have any fish in my ponds (as yet. Planning to put some in the large pond when it's finished). I never really see what other animals or birds might visit the mini ponds. But something must visit them as they all have duckweed in them, and I certainly didn't put it in there. 5 buckets have a sort of reed-grass in them (can't remember what type. Grown from seed collected from a plant growing in a ditch, Norfolk). 2 mini ponds have Marsh Marigolds. Lovely plants, really a bit over enthusiastic for this type of situation. Don't have room for much else. One pond has Water Mint in it. One mini-marsh garden has Cotton Grass in it. Another Marsh garden contains 2 native orchids that I had to remove from a boggy spot in my garden last year (I think a badger had been digging for worms and caused quite a bit of damage. But they survived and both flowering better than ever this year). The others contain Bulrush (which has to be chopped back really hard every year), Water Forget Me Not, or just the duckweed for now. I'm planning to add more mini-ponds in the future, as there's a real up-tick in amphibians once I started doing this. But I'm lucky in that I have a spring emerged at the far end of the garden (looking to developing that in the future. It flows down a slope, so there's lots of interesting possibilities there). Also, there's another boggy spot, which has different types of Carex, a tall reed with long cattail like flowers, and primroses. So, altogether, plenty of flowers, and not as many mosquitoes as I thought would occur. Very few, in fact.

I have a whiskey barrel pond that I lined with a pond insert. I put a solar powered aerator in it along with goldfish, and have all kinds of wildlife coming to my backyard. This includes a mother raccoon with her babies. So cute!!!

I added a small (less than 5 sq ft.) backyard pond to my urban yard this year. It has been incredible to see the different creatures it attracts.

It's amazing how much life a mini pond can attract. I made one from a kids hippo sand pit. It was too shallow for frogs to spawn in but the invertebrates love it. Lots of animals drink from it. I put a deeper one beside it and have frogs visiting in the summer. We'll put in a big pond at some stage.

I built a slightly bigger version of this about 2 years ago in a patch of apple trees, it’s amazing how quickly frogs found it to spawn in and this year I’ve even noticed an adult frog has moved into the pond, it likes to sit on the rocks that are just below the water surface

Great idea. Even the smallest pond or tub with some plants and a small bog (plant) filter brings more life to your garden. And if you keep it free form fish it wil be a perfect habitat for amphibians and for very specific insect species. And birds and dragonflies will come and visit your little pond as well. It is a joy to watch. 👍

Love this idea! I have a small pond in my garden with willows and cattails. I've seen squirrels and birds come to drink the water from the pond

At its best, I feel like the entire UK can be considered a giant garden- intensely modified and settled, not natural, but a landscape wherein nature is invited into the human landscape and let flourish. E.g. fallow fields, hedgerows, backyard gardens & allotments, forests planted a few centuries ago for timber, grouse moors deforested long ago. So these human-created or modified habitats are important to the wildlife of the UK, even if small!

I recently found we have water scorpions in our lake, apparently they are common but I never knew they existed.

Build a smallish pond in the garden this year and was so surprised that the frogs and newts found it within days, it really shows how much wildlife depends on these waters.

I absolutely love this message! Thank you for making this video, I revived my own bucket ponds recently and there is so much life already visiting. Awesome message, awesome video!

This is something a lot of aquarium fish keepers do already . By keeping fish outside , mosquitoes are not an issue cuz the fish eat the eggs being laid on the water . You can also keep various plants

I have six water baths that I made from concrete moulds in my garden. I live in an semi arid landscape between two mountains. The area tips to around 35 degrees celcius in the summer months. I started with two and the different species of birds formed a ranking system and would wait their turn. I got worried since some waited a while so I just kept adding on. I will made a big wildlife pond in my front garden this coming spring since it is winter now. Thank you so much for the inspiration. Last year was very dry and warm. When it tipped over 35 degrees celcius I put a small sprinkler on and all the different birds species congregated under the sprinkler without any issues. It's a beautiful site. Btw we have plenty of small insect eating bats that come out at night. The hide under the clifs in the mountains.

I made 2 mini ponds in a wooded bit at the end of my garden a few years back when I was about 12. Both are still used for birds to bathe in or flies to leave their larvae :)

Hi from Singapore! I have my own little mini container outdoor pond in my high rise apartment. I would be more than glad to join your movement! But it would be even better if you have a website page where we can pledge our support, and commit to creating our own pond.

Great to see this video. If you want to help/attract wildlife to your garden you can't beat a pond. I have a small 2x2m pond and 2 mini ponds. I've seen bird visiting the mini ponds for baths and drinks, as well as the bigger one, and of course they are all full of life, 13 clumps of frogspawn in the larger pond, so many tadpoles many of them overwinter and and invertebrates galore: Water fleas, Hydra, Snails, non biting midge larvae, ostracods and lots of other species :)

Check with local regulations for open non-chlorinated water. At some times and places you cant have water that mosquitoes can grow in. I chose to put in mosquito dunks, that sadly could affect things other than mosquitoes. I have to re-add the dunks from time to time. I simply have an overturned garbage/bin lid that catches water from the (purposely) leaking faucet. It is very popular and no doubt organisms rely on it to keep alive during drought and dry periods. [It is a faucet from a private well that has been tested for contaminants and has no additives.]

Lots of comments complaining about small ponds encouraging mosquitoes but in Europe they do not carry malaria and only live for 3-4 weeks. I wouldn't get into a panic about it.

I'm currently redoing my little garden and trying to create more diverse mini habitats and food for birds and pollinating insects. Was toying with the idea of creating a container pond in a sawn-off barrel. You've convinced me to go for it!

My pond is a wildlife oasis and has brought me endless hours of joy and entertainment watching the seasonal changes and the lives of it's countless inhabitants! Thanks for the vid!

Glorious idea and great inspiration on how to by you and one of your kids Rob! Definitely do a part two once it's well established and supporting tons of different critters and life-forms! Woo-hoo!

This is such a cool idea! I love that you're encouraging people to create little ponds in their gardens. It's a great way to help wildlife and it doesn't take up a lot of space. I'm definitely going to try to make a container pond myself. Do you have any suggestions on the best types of plants to use? Also, how can I make sure the pond is deep enough for wildlife? Thanks! ❤️

My local council put in the newsletter we should leave water bowls out last summer, so I left out a plastic tub with water, occationally swapping the water. All summer I saw birds and dragonflys. This summer I want to make it a bit more accessible, so this video is a great help. I might dig a hole to put it in.

I’ve got one in my small garden, it’s all settled and vibrant now and no mosquitoes whatsoever. There’s a toad that visits every now and then when it’s hot out

I've had various mini ponds in my backyard in Tennessee for more than a decade. The first was pretty small but had regular visitors immediately. Frogs of course, but our variety of visiting birds really shot up. In 2015 I increased the size and slightly shifted location. I buried an old canoe up to the gunwales and put various plants and cover features. I've also had goldfish in mine since the start. They eat the mosquito larvae and keep that population down. It's been my favorite feature in my yard (garden) for years. After it was well established for a few years, we saw the whole circle of life going on. Various raptors would tear things up going after frogs. I saw a very large hawk having a bath one morning. Herons turned out to be nocturnal vandals. I was thinking it was racoons or possum, but my local water garden folks said herons will tear things up. Sure enough, lots of fountains and plants have been strewn across the yard. It often freezes here during the winter and it's fun to watch the goldfish swimming under the ice. They all survive the winter freeze, it's the other natural predators that take their toll.

Nice video, great to see you care and calling for an initiative like this. I converted a half barrel into a small pond 2 years back with underwater plants, water lily and marginals in a basket. When I noticed mosquito larvae, I added a little fish that cleared up all the mosquitos. Later I introduced another fish. They survived winters with frozen layer of ice on top. It has a great eco-system. So mosquito worry shouldn't stop anyone from having a little pond

I have three mini ponds at the mo, and two trays of water around. A few other containers that are filled with water but not quite got the status of mini pond yet. Im thinking about digging a pond soon too, as i found my first frog recently and want to encourage some breeding when they're ready! Whenever anyone asks me how to get more birds to the garden, my answer is always to make a mini pond! Love them 😊

Great information and tutorial on creating a small pond but taking your kid with you is the big win as he will take this forward in life.

I would have liked seeing you put the whole tiny pond together step by step. And an update link on how it’s going if possible. Also, would frogs eat garden slugs? I’d love that in the Black Forest where they are quite abundant to say the least.

I have a small narrow yard with a terraced slope at the back. I put in a small pond that drops into a slightly larger pond from the terrace wall. You wouldn't believe the birds and animals I got. Since then I added a third higher pond with a stream running down to the small pond. The temperature in my back yard on the hottest days is 5 degrees cooler! Animals and birds of all types visit to drink and bath.

I have a lovely pond with loads of wildlife including newts and deagon fly larvae. Love it.

I did 2 this year and I can't believe the amount of insects and bugs that have turned up to them. Later in the year I'm going to build a wildlife pond as well I can wait.

If you have gutter downspouts that dump straight onto the ground, you need to try this: 1. Dig a trench around your house to bury (with gravel) smooth pipe and connect all your downspouts 2. direct the trench and pipe away from your house to the lowest point on your property where it dumps into a catchment basin and overflows to a gravel filled pit to disperse 3. run a 12 volt solar pump from catchment to fill a small pond you've dug halfway up the trench path 4. let the pond overflow back to the catchment basin 5. use all the dirt you've dug to berm up (and hugleculture) next to the pond 6. start filling the pond with cold hardy aquatic plants like water hawthorne 7. surround the pond with beautiful grasses, bushes, decorative rocks, and so on to your hearts content 8. get a fish 9. the frogs, dragonflies, and birds will come 10. don't forget the mosquito dunks

a couple years ago I put a big plastic storage container outside and just started dumping my aquarium trimmings in it. There are damselflies breeding in it, it's full of scuds and other aquatic invertebrates, wildlife drinks from it, it's good.

I’ve got some wine barrel ponds. And I’ve got fish in them that eat mosquitoes. In a way they are better for controlling mosquitoes than no pond because the mosquito wrigglers that get laid in the ponds turn into tasty snacks rather than mosquitoes. If they had been laid somewhere else they might have made it to adulthood. So far the ponds have been fun, they give us a reason to go to different corners of the yard to check on the fish, and then see what else is going on. And the plants beside them do better in hot weather because of the evaporation from the pond providing some moisture and cooling. Which is why one of the ponds is near the reverse cycle heater/cooler where it does a surprisingly good job of protecting the plants from the hot air discharged when the cooler is on inside. The cold air discharged in winter doesn’t worry them either, but they are plants that can deal with colder weather than what we get here in Australia.

Our garden and the neighbours are both pretty wild with loads of birds. Big hedges, some dense hedges, veg patch for dust baths. We have loads of different garden and woodland birds plus passing birds of prey. Also loads of bees butterflies moths and a bat.

thank you! I need to get moving creating a container pond :D

A full cover of floating plants like duck weed greatly reduces mosquitos numbers in container ponds. Insects week bees avoid failing on the water too. I have kept mine ponds how 30+ years.

This a wonderful and inspiring video for all those who feel helpless. I live on a boat, so can't really do much along these lines, but I try to encourage my friends ashore. Your mum has a lovely garden - does she have part of it set aside for wildflowers, too?

I love this idea, I've wanted to do it myself for a while but couldn't quite work out the logic of it so I have a few questions - 1) what is the importance of the 'oxygenating plant' 2) how do you prevent the water being stagnant and becoming potentially hazardous? 3) is there not a concern of the dead plant matter in the water making the water too ammonia heavy/oxygen light (and if that is what the oxygenating plant is for, can it offset it at a reliable rate?) Very happy you've done this especially without using those black plastic tarps people seem to put under a lot of water features!

I have been watching your own content and that on Mossy earth. Your inspiration has motivated into building a garden pond on the cheap. I have buried kids old sand pit. Kids and birds love it.

This is so inspiring! I live in an urban area but I have a balcony that I could put a little pond in for the birds, bees, and other flying creatures. Also, so cute to see your little one and your childhood garden. Overall this was so heartwarming!

My parents dug a pond and filled it with native plants and it was truly amazing that within a day or two there were bugs and insects (where did they come from we asked!), dragon and damselflies, they filmed birds, deer, and badgers visiting, and there's a frog! Truly joyful to sit by it in the summer and even through the seasons as it freezes

You should set up a wildlife camera and see what arrives, love the video, great idea

This is so inspirational! I love ponds and rain gardens so much.

love your channel mate love seeing you on mossy earth as well keep shining and making the world a little better

Yeah I did this two years ago 20 gallon tub buried in the garden and put some pond plants in and a bubbler starting to look good ❤❤🎉🎉 love your channel brother

i am def building one of these in my backyard. the only issue i have is that i live in southeastern Brazil, we got mosquitoes and dengue and zika. gotta make sure i keep the pond mosquito larvae free.

I'm redoing my container pond that I've been using at my house in the PNW west of the US. I get a lot of birds at mine. Mostly American robins, black capped chickadees and spotted towhees with occasional visits from red breasted nuthatches and even more rarely cedar waxwings

Great idea. You should make a video about the effects of the modern trend of sanitising gardens with decking, flagging, concrete and the dreaded artificial grass. The modern garden might have a handful of ornamental, non native, nature unfriendly plants. 🤨

Great video. It really doesnt matter how big or small, water attracts wildlife. I've had frogs, insects and birds in all 4 in my garden (all recycled/upcycled) ranging from a 40cm planter with a solar pump and pebbles, which the insects love, up to an old paddling pool (one of those shell ones that is designed to be half pool/half sandpit).

I have a very tiny pondlet which is sometimes visited by a frog.

Hey hey, I agree the little bits make a big difference. I have a small barrel pond. It has moved houses with me. I kept all the water. It has water Beatles, water fleas and I even found a dragonfly nymph in it. Frogs can’t reach it though. Thanks for your videos. I hope it becomes mandatory that all new builds are built with hedgehog highways for frogs and hogs. You should consider visiting Oak hill park in north London, Barnet. They have let the bottom of the park turn to a meadow and wetland (when I first started visiting they used to mow it… now they just mow paths). It’s a beautiful space. There is a nature reserve there as well it’s full of birds.

I dug down an old bathtub under a downspout so its self filling. Put in some stones, charcoal and logs. No plants yet. It looks quite messy after the winter, I dont clean it becuase its hard lol. Seen birds and toads etc in it so its worth it! Did this 3 years ago I think.

Watching the birds bath in my pond root filter gravel tray is always good. Anything smaller than a frog gets carped in the actual pond though

“She might be creepy but she’s pretty” 😭 loving the humour in this one 💚

I used one of the black, rectangular tubs they sell at the big hardware stores and added rocks and a limb in case something needs to crawl out. I'm in the high desert so water is very scarce and appreciated.

New Forest is one of the best natural forests in the UK, as it have had the processes from large grazers all the time. You should visit.

this was so great I'm one hundred percent making a pond with the kids tomorrow thank you for the inspo and the entertainment. shout out to creepy Jenny 😆

I relatively recently set up 2 in my back yard, i even stocked the lower of the 2 (they form a waterfall between the 2 when it rains) with a native water snail to keep algae in check

Do you have a pond? If so, what stops by for a visit?

I have a bird bath sitting in a small pond. It gets very hot in summer 45C and my water is very important for the sparrows and pigeons, they need me.

Great idea and video, which has got me thinking. My garden in Norway is bordered by a forest and has a stream that runs through the bottom end. I looked up the price of pond plants and clay based soil and had to do a re-think. I've got the containers and space, but just need to work on the planting side. There's wet and shaded corners and all sorts of wildlife that would benefit from a pond or two.

i wish people were like this in ireland, there’s coilte, a forestry company who claims to promote biodiversity but they just plant conifer plantations, people letting grass grow out and calling it “rewilding” it’s so frustrating, i watch these cause our environment is similar, good on you

I think one good reason for using lower nutrition water soil is, that regular soil is gonna have a lot of nitrogen in it, which is gonna likely cause an excess of algae, right?

Nice idea for video, we need more wetlands XD

I moved to my sisters house in '23. She had a pond with nothing in it, so I put two Lilies, irises, oxygenator, water mint, lathyrus, and stickle backs into it. I think there may be more plants, but I can't recall.😅 I did put some watercress in it.

I've had a whiskey barrel pond for a couple of years in my urban garden. Unfortunately, all I get is mayflies and pigeons. It's possible that the foxes get a drink there at night.

I have an accidental mini pond. Somewhere to toss my extra fish tank plants. Always tadpoles

I have about two dozen 5-gallon bucket miniponds spread around. But their real purpose is to act as mosquito traps as I have them inoculated with BTI larvicide bacteria. Mosquitoes are one part of nature we can do without, and these minipond traps work extremely well. Mosquitoes might not be a problem in UK right now, but rest assured they soon will be.

great idea

I’m going to build one, I recently finished a level geography and it’s peculiar how never give us this inspiration to take an extra step.

I find it hard to see frogs coming up a paved road, going through my hedgehog entrance and into my mini ponds. I am considering building a bigger pond using a liner.

Made mine about month ago for next to nothing. Plastic bowl, about 70 liters (free) and used expanding foam (6€) to anchor some stones and driftwood so that if animal fells into water it can get out. Had old aquarium filter (bought used, 15€) which makes a little stream and is completely unseen under few rocks and still easy to clean. Got maybe 200 kg of roundish rocks from different places, from thumb size to head size which I stacked to cover bowl from the outside and got a lot of different mosses from forest which fill the crevices between the rocks. I made a ramp from stones so that squirrels, hedgehogs etc. can get a sip of water if needed. Took some rotala and floating plants from my aquarium also. For animals I took some frog spawn from lake nearby and have now maybe 100 tadpoles swimming around, during next month they will leave the pond. There's already a lot of life around it, insects love it and spiders hunt insects for easy meal. Smaller birds like to drink and wash themselves in the stream. It's right beside where I sit and I love hearing that small stream. I have had no problems with algae, water is crystal clear and pond is in a place which get sunlight only few hours a day. Also, I have no mosquito problems as the water is moving, so they don't like to lay their eggs there. And if they do, tadpoles will eat them 😋 Took few days to make mine as I needed to wait expanding foam to harden and it wasn't simplest build possible, but you can make your own in half an hour and then later add something more if needed. I strongly encourage making one if you have a place for it, I regret not making one earlier.

>What if we created 23 Million Mini Ponds? me, fighting with a bloody amount of mosquitoes this year despite an urban environment: HOW ABOUT NO

Surely that marestail should be under the water to do any oxygenating? A quick search suggests 6 to 20 cm of water above soil level.

I love this. I have an allotment and they won't let us have ponds which is a real shame. I live in an upstairs flat but I have a roof terrace that I've covered in container plants so I'm thinking of making one of these little ponds!

Thanks for this, I’m looking to make a small pond in my allotment in Cheshire but didn’t know where to start!

I have 3 ponds in my garden. 1 wildlife. And 2 fish ponds. Iv never been bothered by mosquitoes. Put a few white cloud minnow or stickle backs into your pond. They will eat any mosquitoes

So important to get plants from a reputable seller and UK species only! We have such a problem with invasive pond plants.

During lockdown i dug a small round pond (about 1M across) and put a few goldfish in it. I enjoyed it so much that a year later i enlarged it to 4M x 2M and added a waterfall and a filter system. I then added some koi carp. Despite the pond now being 5 years old I've never had any frogs or newts visit. Water insects and creatures are non existant with the exception of water hog louse which live in the rocks in my waterfall. Maybe the fish are eating any invertebrates in the pond itself. I have had a visit from 1 Dragonfly (the first I've seen in my garden for 30+ years) but it didn't stay long. What it has done though is to increase the bird life coming to my garden. Lots of different species coming to drink and bathe. Even a heron came early one morning but it was unwelcome as it took 2 of my smaller fish. I have thought about doing some pond dipping in a nearby pond and introducing some natural pond life but am worried about inadvertently introducing parasites to my fish. Still I highly recommend a pond to anyone who has the space, it can only benefit nature. 👍👍

I have a small backyard pond I love sitting by it sinking some cans and punching some cones and listening to some tunes if you stay still enough the birds don't see you and almost use me as a perch but it is important to have some sort of exit point for wildlife

Gonna see if I can build one below my block of flats. Optimistic I know, but this video's given me a kick up the arse

Would love a flow-up to this to see who visits!

Thank you 🙏🏻 Rob!! That was a Brilliant spark ⚡️ of creativity that was magically 🪄 orchestrated into a fantastic wildlife habitat!! 🪴🌿🪵💧🐿🐁🕊🐇🦜🐈🦎🦟🦗🐞🐝🪰🦋🐌🪳🪲🐀🍄

Here in the south part of France, authorities ask us to NOT build ponds or leave any kind of still water (running water is OK) because of tiger moskitos that are invasive, can bring serious diseases and reproduce very quickly in even small amounts of still waters.

In rewilding circles, most of the attention is given to larger fauna. However, when one thinks about it, smaller fauna need a bit of help in too when it comes to facing the challenges of global modernization as well. Fortunately, small little bits of habitat such as ponds can help these smaller creatures adapt to living in a world facing the pressures of global modernization more smoothly.

Unfortunately most of the 15 small gardens around me are barren stone deserts. I haven’t even seen a hedgehog this year, or many birds since the last tree was cut down. But maybe I’ll make a small pond, if I can find the right container.

Amazing idea!