Pond life
Our pond at Genus HQ brings us so much joy as well as a myriad of life into the garden. There’s not a month in the year when something isn’t attracted to it’s cool depths whether for food, shelter, or moisture.
We’ve spoken before about the toads that spawn every year and the tadpoles that busy themselves foraging in the warm margins. As May and June progress we start to see the aerial acrobats. Damselfly and dragonfly larvae that have spent up to three years in the pond swim to the surface and climb up the marginal plants that we’ve provided for them. Here they split their skin and the colourful adult emerges. We then see them darting around the garden hunting for unsuspecting prey such as greenfly or mosquitoes which they eat on the wing.
They belong to the order of insects called Odonata which means toothed ones and it’s with their serrated mandibles that they eat their food while still airborne. With flashes of sapphire blue or emerald green the odonata are the true jewels of the sky and reason enough to find room in your garden for a pond of any size.
