Update on main pond landscaping and habitat restoration
Froglife has reduced and removed saplings and shrubs from Ruskin Park pond’s central island and re-profiled the banks in the first stage of works designed to make the pond safer and better for wildlife.
Working alongside Lambeth Landscapes, the national charity secured funding, including from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, for the London T.O.A.D. project. This funding has been used to undertake the first stage of works using landscaping and habitat restoration to address some of the pond’s issues.
The pond had suffered from over-shading due to many trees and dense scrub on the central island and around its banks. As well as choking out valuable ground flora, this destabilised the pond banks and resulted in large amounts of leaves falling into the water. This had caused a build-up of thick silt, reduced water depth and frequent blue-green algal blooms.
As well as aiming to address the pond’s issues, the works have opened up sight-lines into the pond and restored open areas of ground habitat.
Lambeth Landscapes are also looking into how the pond’s water holding capacity and depth can be improved. These are longstanding problems not helped by the pond’s dependence on surface runoff and natural springs, which are increasingly unreliable or changing in their location.
Lambeth Landscapes will lead a second phase of the restoration project, will be see volunteers planting the banks in spring 2020 with native plant species, alongside creating additional habitat for toads, frogs and other amphibians as well as other wildlife.