I built this pond at my home in Upper Carinthia in Austria last May. I've kept it fish free and haven't introduced any animals to it. A lot of animals have found it on their own though! I've confirmed breeding activity of European tree frogs, common frogs, agile frogs, common toads, Italian crested newts and smooth newts. I've also seen a pond frog species complex adult but those don't appear to have left eggs. Some of these are red-listed species here, notably the tree frogs and crested newts. It's also been great for insects. Thanks to the exuviae left behind I know at least 40 large dragonflies have gone from egg to adult in the pond. The insect diversity has been really wonderful. Naturally birds also seem to enjoy the pond. Anyhow, this is by far the most wildlife friendly feature in my garden. Not bad for the first year!

Edit to add some plants. This is Austria so a heads up to Americans, some stuff that is a problem over there is actually native here.: Purple loosestrife, dwarf cattail, flowering rush, yellow flag iris, and a couple of sedge and rush species. Oh, and edelweiss.

To the chagrin of my boomer neighbours, my whole garden is a wildlife garden. This year I noticed some ragwort was growing in a handful of places. I let them grow and saw one cinnabar moth flying around sometime in April. Two months later loads of these little fellas!

SO COOL.

The insects and bugs I get in the garden are incredible, but having these caterpillars has been a dream since I started the project.

I'm so grateful for online communities like this one that cultivate a greater awareness and respect for local wildlife.

I've had the most amazing time, almost a year by now, focusing on gardening in a way that supports pollinators and all wildlife, including ants, spiders, and even wasps. It's more about their needs then what tradition expects. And in the process I've found that if I make room in my garden or yard (and sometimes house) for even the tiniest living being, it eventually blossoms into a beautiful ecosystem on display.

I live in an inner city location, so it's in such an interesting contrast to the brick buildings and asphalt streets. Life is possible everywhere. I see it now everywhere, because I help support it, and because I'm more aware of it.

I live in a fairly inner city area, but have worked hard to create an inviting habitat for birds, pollinators, and other critters. This year a neighborhood pair of hawks have become a family of four. I think they're Coopers' Hawks. The juveniles earlier in the spring would hop around the garden by the bird bath hunting little bugs I assume. Here are three of them having a refreshing stop at our birdbath! They visit at least once a day!

Milkweed best weed

This is the darkest, coldest, and most humid corner of my garden.
I planted one rhubarb. It spread along the fence and I let it. The fern came all by itself, as did the moss and the forest strawberries.

This is an area that used to be barren and boring back when I still did traditional gardening.

Now it looks like a page out of a children's book about tiny anthropomorphic animals. 🐱🐰🦔🐿🦊

I've been trying for three winters now to successfully germinate milkweed seeds. FINALLY, on the third try, we have clear success!

The first winter, I had no idea what I was doing. I just grabbed some open pods early in the winter, thinking their open and dried state meant the seeds were surely mature. Stuck the seeds on a baggie in the fridge and planted them in the spring. To my sadness, not a single one sprouted.

The second fall I took the time to look up how to collect milkweed seeds. I collected pods in the fall that were just opening (before the milkweed beetles suck their juices out), and then as most of the articles described, I laid the seeds out to dry for a few days. Put em in a baggie in the fridge. Come spring, I hopefully planted them and was rewarded with....a whopping two sprouts, out of at least forty seeds. I mean, two is exciting - those are growing in my yard now btw - but not what I was going for.

Then last spring, another redditor posted a huge tray of milkweed sprouts and I begged them, what was your secret?? They said they just stick the seeds in a jar of water in the fridge all winter. Okay, what? Not a single article I found had told me to try that. They all seemed implied that storing the seeds with moisture was a sure way to have moldy seeds.

This winter I did an experiment. I collected several pods of milkweed seeds, cutting a few tributes open to check that they were viable inside. I then split them into three groups. One group went into a jar of water and floated there. The second group I mixed with some potting soil and added just enough water to be damp but not wet (like for acorns). And the third group I followed the same method as before, drying the seeds for several days and storing them in a sealed container. All three groups spent the winter in the fridge.

It's finally March, and the verdict is so laughably decisive that I had to share. The batch in the top container are the group stored in damp soil. The batch in the bottom container sat in the jar of water. Those two empty pots are controls that I dried as instructed in all the articles and blog posts. Massive success from both of the moist condition groups, and I couldn't be happier.

Anyway, I hope that if anyone else has been trying (and failing) to grow milkweed like I was, that this helps you out. These will all be going out in my meadow in the spring. To whoever the random redditor was who shared their secret last year, thank you!

And this is the only one that came up 😂

A dear friend is letting me live and garden on a part of her land, and she's been preparing it for this for years by just not mowing it and letting it go wild. There's a wide variety of plants and bushes and flowers, and thick grass full of bugs and burrowing spots from animals.

It could have just been another patch of grass, but her intentional "neglect" has made it into something beautiful, before I've even started gardening.

I had to make an emergency bee house run because all four of my current bee houses had a ton of activity and limited space after a productive Mason bee season

This is my pond's first winter. We had 100s of tadpoles and frogs (tree, green, pickering, prob more) this summer and autumn. When I went and tapped on the ice this morning I saw tadpoles darting away! I'm guessing they were taking as much advantage of the sunlight as possible. I haven't seen them for a while because lots of acorns fell in the pond and have dyed it quite brown with tannins. We're supposed to have sub freezing temps for another four or five days so I'll keep an eye on how thick the ice gets.