In 2022, after collaborating with the Harmony Gardens friends group to install a small wildlife pond in their food-growing area, they directed our attention to a wonderful little secret garden behind their community center that had become neglected during the lockdown of 2020 and asked if there was any hope for their badly damaged pond, it barely held any water and was overgrown with bullrush and iris. Mike Downs from the Friends of Harmony Gardens group had even resorted to saving the pond’s tadpoles and returning them to the area once they had completed their metamorphosis into frogs. It was a sad state of affairs.
This August, after finally raising all the necessary funds required to completely replace the old, damaged pond with a brand new one, we set a date to begin the long-planned restoration of the wildlife pond that had fallen into quite serious disrepair over at Harmony Gardens, a community growing space based at North London’s Lordship Recreation Ground in Broadwater Farm, Tottenham.
The first task on day one was removing the old damaged plastic liner, the iris, and the bullrushes. The construction was undertaken by our project partners from Waterside Landscaping who specialise in freshwater habitat restoration projects. Their team understands our vision to create an interconnected network of freshwater habitats that interlaces seamlessly within urban society in a way that is natural, responsible, and beneficial for both biodiversity and people alike.
Next was to dig the hole; the overall size was slightly larger to maximize the habitat available for freshwater biodiversity, but first of all, to avoid sending the old plastic liner to landfill where it would become part of the never-ending mass of waste created by today’s society, a deeper hole was dug beneath the new habitat where the old liner would spend the rest of its days beneath a new liner made from natural materials.
Once the hole was dug and the new clay liner was installed, the existing substrate, a combination of sand, clay, and mud, was back-filled to create a seamless border that made the pond synonymous with its surroundings.
The design of this pond was created by Freshwater Life Project chairman Chris Englezou and included specific aspects like a very subtle edge gradient to allow easy access for wildlife, shallow riparian shelves to enable easy growth by spreading plants like Myosostis scorpiodes, the water forget-me-not, and others like Mentha pulegium, Nasturtium aquaticum, and others, as well as a deeper channel through the centre of the pond leading to the main pool that would prevent the fast-spreading of species like Iris pseudacorus or the bullrushes, should they return.
Once the liner was in and the pond was back-filled with the substrate, the pond was scaped into the designed shape and we got the filling process started.
The final touches of the design scaping were completed as the pond filled and local resident and volunteer Dole assisted with much of the hard work and some important habitat creation!
The pond was left to fill overnight and on our return in the morning we got to get a real sense of how magical this pond, and this place, was going to become.
Overnight, local frogs had already returned to the pond and were enjoying their new habitat, dragonflies circling, damselflies were breeding above the water, and various bee species were coming to the water to drink, and to burrow; it was an amazing start to the day 2!
As part of the funded project, over 100 native British marginal and aquatic plants were installed and will be allowed to establish their roots between now and the end of the year in preparation for their return in the spring. Some iconic marginal species were included such as the purple loosestrife Lythrum salicaria, and the subtle but beautiful flowering rush, Butomus umbellatus, among others.
One of the British species introduced to this pond was the Lesser Water Plantain Baldellia ranunculoides, a threatened species that has a wide geographic range but is already extinct in Sicily, Slovenia, and possibly Poland, is critically endangered in Italy, Croatia, and Switzerland, endangered in Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, and Sweden, and is classified as Near Threatened in the UK where it suffers mostly from the impacts of habitat destruction due to housing development, and pollution from agriculture and other sources. We were pleased to include this species in an urban project to show that conservation is possible in line with development, and we will monitor its progress at this site.
Another plant that stood out in this particular pond build was Hypericum tetrapterum; from the second this plant went into the margins of the pond it was covered in hoverflies of the genus Heliphilus, which are known to lay their eggs in water where their larvae develop.
Chris Englezou (Freshwater Life Project) with the construction team from Waterside Landscaping, and Mike Downs from the Friends of Harmony Gardens
The fundraising for this project was a combined effort by the Friends of Harmony Gardens community group led by Chairwoman Ruth Green, and Mike Downs, and by the Freshwater Life Project team headed by project manager Laura Suckley, and project coordinator Chris Englezou. Thank you to all involved and to all those who donated to help bring this urban wildlife haven to life! Click here to learn more about our Inner City Pond Project.
