Going with the flow

“One of the wonders of making any kind of pond is how soon wildlife takes up home there”

I resisted water in this garden until eight years ago. It seems extraordinary to me now, but I had reasons that seemed valid enough back then. The first was that when we came here, we had small children. Friends of my parents had a two-year-old daughter who drowned in their small garden pond, so it was drummed into me from an early age that small children and ponds did not mix. Our previous house had quite a large pond that was very beautiful, but one of the first things I did was to fence it off. No pond, I decided, until the youngest can swim unaided.