Ponds, streams, waterfeatures, and wetlands

A well designed natural garden pond, stream, water feature, or wetland are all key elementsBrown pond 1 of our work at Natural Gardens. They provide both a stunning visual centrepiece to your garden and a wonderful place to sit and relax.
Your garden wildlife will love them too. Birds will come to drink and bathe, and a home will be created for a whole new community of creatures, including frogs, toads, newts and dragonflies.
With water always present the plants establish rapidly so will very soon blend into the surrounding garden or landscape.

Pond ConstuctionWildlife ponds construction

Having designed and installed Wildlife Ponds for many years, we know there’s probably no more valuable feature you can add to a garden than a wildlife pond. Apart from creating a rich habitat for many pond creatures – including dragonflies, frogs, and toads – insects will love the additional pollen and nectar from the pond plants, anything from bees to birds will visit to drink, and birds and bats will hunt insects over the pond.

Pond features to consider

Other features such as waterfalls, streams, water features, bog gardens, decking, and bridges can all be included. One of our particular skills is to incorporate what might seem like ‘standard’ garden design features in a wild setting to provide a completely fresh, natural aesthetic.

Streams and Waterfalls

Streams or waterfalls add the pleasing element of moving water to the garden, while the sound alone contributes greatly to the ambience. With years of experience in designing & constructing streams & waterfalls Natural Gardens will bring your ideas to reality.

Courtyard water featureCreating a Water Feature

At Natural Gardens we take great care to make our water features appear entirely natural, and can construct many types; a true waterfall, tumbling or gentle stream or cascade, or more formal fountain or bubbling water source can all be made for you and can be seen below.

Many different types of stone can be used too; from our local flint to limestone (e.g. York stone) to slate, there are lots of variations. We use hand picked stone to ensure the best look for your water feature.
Streams and waterfalls don’t have to be stand alone features either, as we excel at combining them with wildlife ponds and wetlands.

Sweet galingale & purple loosestrife

Sweet galingale & purple loosestrife

Wetlands & Bog Gardens

The two terms (Wetlands & Bog Gardens) can be interchangeable, although perhaps wetlands better describes a wilder, sizeable habitat, perhaps beside a larger wildlife pond or a meadow. A bog garden would probably be beside a garden pond or border.

Unless you are lucky enough to have a naturally low-lying and damp part of your garden, these features require a liner. Although in this case a much cheaper quality of liner can be used, as a few small holes are usually deliberately introduced to help encourage enough through flow of water to prevent stagnation.

An old, leaking pond can usually be easily converted into a wetland or bog garden. Combining a wildlife pond with one can also provide a wonderfully natural environment. Add a surrounding meadow and the transformation is complete

Bringing Your Wetland to Life

Wetland plants such as hemp agrimony, meadowsweet, purple loosestrife, flag iris, and cuckooflower provide wonderful nectar for insects, together with marvelous cover for all manner of small creatures. Yet these and other wetland plants are unable to survive in a typical garden border, so creating a wetland or bog garden will add even more diversity of planting and wildlife habitat to your garden.

Our ponds, water features, & wetland galleries are here.