Creating pond life

Back in February we did the first phase of pond restoration in the Orchard for the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust and Stroud Valleys Project. Back then, the perimeter of the pond was insecure, and there were many trees shading the pond. It was a good start, but there wasn’t much sign of aquatic vegetation over the summer.

So we returned today to continue the restoration. There were two areas of focus – one team worked on removing the silt from the floor of the pond, while Mike and I worked on taking out more willow from the edge. Storm Ciaran hit the UK today, but in this area it was relatively calm, although we all had good waterproofs for the task.

Cutting the willow safely was a jigsaw puzzle. We selected one branch at a time for the pole saw, and cleared as we went.

By mid morning tea break we had removed the first of three major stems and countless other smaller branches.

Pretty soon we had all the weight taken out of a major trunk and a big sky hole had opened up lighting the pond. Ideally the chainsaw would have taken the main trunk out, but it didn’t work so Pete hand sawed while we cleared further stems from the ponds itself.

Major progress was made today and there should be no need to visit this part of the orchard again – it can be left to do its thing. We’ll make a diary note to check the vegetation next summer after a full season of light hitting the water.