You don’t need a huge garden or even diggable ground to make a wetland. Making a mini pond out of an old sink, metal tub, or a container under your drainpipe all make a difference and help increase biodiversity.
A pond provides endless fascination to garden visitors of all ages with its cast of comic, dazzling or intriguing creatures, such as water boatmen, dragonflies, frogs and newts.
Adding a wetland to a garden is a tried, tested and proven stress-buster too: a place to wind down, think, lose worries and find calm.
In areas at risk of flooding, garden wetlands have the added benefit of slowing down and reducing the run-off of heavy rains into drains. If everyone added a small wetland to their garden, this would help reduce the pressure on our rivers and floodplains.
For gardeners, a wetland means a greater variety of attractive native plants can be grown. These plants then attract mini-beasts which pollinate fruit, flowers and vegetables, and bring in other helpful pest-controllers, like birds and hedgehogs.
* 2018 WWF Living Planet Report