Osprey Wrote:Love your ponds and bog gardens Liz

Janowl, I was wondering about your pond. So.............a frog or toad already! Told you they would soon come.

Yeah but it needs a mrs/mr!!! and there was only one. Anybody know how you sex a frog!!!!!!??????

Unlike stick insects, I might add, who are that thing that is both sexes, so they don't need a partner. What am I rambling on about?????

Haha, try looking at it's underparts janowl!!!!

JUst had another look at this thread I love your bog garden Liz, can I see Purple Loosestrife & Bog Bean?
I've both waiting to go in mine if I ever get it finished, it fills up now with heavy rain but needs a liner & some of the sides dropped a bit hopefully it will be ready for the frogs next summer. I've also got Flag Iris, Watermint, Brooklime, Marsh Valerian Marsh Marogolds & Meadowsweet all waiting plus a couple of kinds of rushes & sedges, I'm luck & have plenty of space but any pond no matter how small is great.

love your pond Liz it's lovely

Liz love your ponds, I am quite green with envy all that wildlife. for you

As to sexing a toad, hmmmmm, ask Toady he will know

underpants indeed

took this last night,theres a big house near where i take the dogs out and this is the pond in its rather large garden

Red Kite Wrote:JUst had another look at this thread I love your bog garden Liz, can I see Purple Loosestrife & Bog Bean?
I've both waiting to go in mine if I ever get it finished, it fills up now with heavy rain but needs a liner & some of the sides dropped a bit hopefully it will be ready for the frogs next summer. I've also got Flag Iris, Watermint, Brooklime, Marsh Valerian Marsh Marogolds & Meadowsweet all waiting plus a couple of kinds of rushes & sedges, I'm luck & have plenty of space but any pond no matter how small is great.

Redkite - you know your water plants that's for sure. You are quite right - bogbean and purple loosetrife - though this loosestife is a hybridised one... it's really small called 'rocket' if my memory serves me correctly. I have the wild purple loostrife in the seperate bog garden where it can grow nice and big - the bees love it.

When I started the wildlife pond my friend from the Suffolk wildlife Trust gave me the bogbean and lesser water plantain ... he also gave me 'greater water plaintain' but it was rather too 'great' for it so I had to take it out. I have meadowsweet, bugle, ladies smock, marsh marigold, watermint and watercress that are the remanants of my original collection but I had reduce it down a bit as the jungle got just a tad manic

I'd love to see pics of your pond Redkite - sounds like it's going to be fabulous.


Thanks to everyone for their lovely comments about my ponds

Bramble1 - what a enormous lake! Lovely setting.... wouldn't mind having that in my back garden!

i know its a massive house on top of a hill and the pond is at the bottom as the garden sweeps down,will try and get some shots of the house next time i go up,was taking the photos over the wall lol,would love a pond myself but have only small back yard and small garden at the front

here is me peering over the wall lol

granheather Wrote:Liz love your ponds, I am quite green with envy all that wildlife. for you

As to sexing a toad, hmmmmm, ask Toady he will know

underpants indeed

Hehe. Cubs wrote 'underparts', not 'underpants' LOL got me giggling now.

  f_frog02m_cffe931.jpg (Size: 76.31 KB / Downloads: 578) isnt it the female frogs that are the biggest and the male are small....janowl you should know this one there were hundreds in your old pond,so many that they mated all night and kept us awake (realy)

janowl Wrote:Unlike stick insects, I might add, who are that thing that is both sexes, so they don't need a partner. What am I rambling on about?????

Janowl, I really don't have the faintest idea how to sex a frog or toad! However, in late February or March you will find that that your pond will be teeming with mating frogs. Honestly, they really do appear as if from nowhere. I don't know of any close neighbours to me who have a pond but when we put ours in the frogs in the very first year were so numerous at mating time it was impossible to count them.

suffolkliz Wrote:

Red Kite Wrote:JUst had another look at this thread I love your bog garden Liz, can I see Purple Loosestrife & Bog Bean?
I've both waiting to go in mine if I ever get it finished, it fills up now with heavy rain but needs a liner & some of the sides dropped a bit hopefully it will be ready for the frogs next summer. I've also got Flag Iris, Watermint, Brooklime, Marsh Valerian Marsh Marogolds & Meadowsweet all waiting plus a couple of kinds of rushes & sedges, I'm luck & have plenty of space but any pond no matter how small is great.

Redkite - you know your water plants that's for sure. You are quite right - bogbean and purple loosetrife - though this loosestife is a hybridised one... it's really small called 'rocket' if my memory serves me correctly. I have the wild purple loostrife in the seperate bog garden where it can grow nice and big - the bees love it.

When I started the wildlife pond my friend from the Suffolk wildlife Trust gave me the bogbean and lesser water plantain ... he also gave me 'greater water plaintain' but it was rather too 'great' for it so I had to take it out. I have meadowsweet, bugle, ladies smock, marsh marigold, watermint and watercress that are the remanants of my original collection but I had reduce it down a bit as the jungle got just a tad manic

I'd love to see pics of your pond Redkite - sounds like it's going to be fabulous.


Thanks to everyone for their lovely comments about my ponds

Bramble1 - what a enormous lake! Lovely setting.... wouldn't mind having that in my back garden!

I'm al little naughty, when doing a survey I take a piece of rhizome if a plant grows that way my Plurple Loosestrife came from a dense mass that kept growing as my client cut the area then roughly cultivated the surface splitting the rhizomes & creating more plants. Bog Bean, Brook lime root very easily from just a couple if inches if stem put in water.
I'd love to have some Flowering Rush, Burr Reed, & Common Reed, I'd also like some Bugle & Lesser Plantain though I don't see that much growing in my areas so wouldn't thake any. The Marsh Valarian is a beautiful plant that likes damp conditions.
No Reed Mace/Bull Rush though they take over, I've just posted some photos of our pond !/2 constructed but full after all the torrential rain.

Edit: I've just seen your photos Sharon they are beautiful

(This post was last modified: 07-09-08, 09:33 PM by Red Kite.)