Back in November 2021, Portsmouth’s Adventure Playgrounds at Stamshaw and Paulsgrove decided to create a pond in a day on their respective sites. What a challenge! The playgrounds wanted to do their part for Portsmouth City Council’s (PCC) Climate Festival to raise awareness of the climate challenges in the city.

Ponds are amazing sources of wildlife and are some of the most biodiverse habitats in the UK. Some estimates suggest that our ponds host more freshwater wildlife than any other freshwater habitat in the UK. Unfortunately, it is thought that one in three British ponds have disappeared in the last fifty years. The destruction of these habitats is linked to increasing development upon our wild lands and the loss of these habitats will mean we are less resilient to climate change. If we do not help to re-create these habitats that we have destroyed, no one else will. Without these valuable habitats, we cannot protect our wildlife that helps mitigate the impacts of climate change.

The Adventure Playgrounds at Stamshaw and Paulsgrove wanted to prove how easy it was and how quickly it takes to make a positive difference, no matter what spaces you have. Stamshaw built a small pond against the wall and Paulsgrove dug a small pond just outside their main building. A couple of PCC staff were on board to lend a helping hand and supervise the build including Lin Atkinson and Marshada Chowdhury, both council officers. Throughout the day parents and children came to help with layering the pond with gravel and planting the plants in the water. They all got truly stuck in and had a lot of fun. Now the game is afoot as everyone eagerly awaits to see the impacts of their work in the next couple of months.

The Trust’s Wilder Communities Officer, Andy Ames, was also on board to give some advice. He said, “Ponds are a unique and accessible habitat that can provide important learning opportunities for young and old alike. A place for learning, a place for memories and a place for first moments. Paulsgrove and Stamshaw adventure playgrounds both decided to create their own wildlife ponds and I was happy to see how many families got involved in the developments. I hope we’ve inspired our community members to do something similar in their own gardens. Mini ponds are incredibly valuable for wildlife, and a network of small ponds in a neighbourhood could be better than just a few large ones.”

Adding a pond is one of the best things you can do for wildlife. They are one of the best ways to bring biodiversity into our city and can help against global warming. Ponds are a potential weapon against climate change playing an important role in capturing carbon and storing it away. Ponds can be purifiers of pollution too. Creating a wildlife pond of any size is the single biggest thing that we can do for nature. Once there is water, life will come.

Earlier in the 2021, Adventure Playgrounds in Portsmouth also placed bird feeders, squirrel feeders, and bat boxes around their site as well as sowing a wildflower seed mix on the land. Lin Atkinson, a Food and Health Project Worker for the centres, is championing nature connection and habitat creation at the playgrounds. The creation of the ponds is just another step in their journey to creating wilder spaces.

Written by Marianne Lotter-Jones

Wilder Portsmouth is a partnership project between the Southern Co-op and Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust. The focus of this jointly-funded initiative is to encourage people to take action to create and enhance wild spaces where they live. 

We want to see more wildlife friendly areas and small outdoor spaces across the city of Portsmouth that are created and supported by the community. You can find out more about the extraordinary activities around the city to create a #WilderPortsmouth here: hiwwt.org.uk/wilder-portsmouth. Get in touch with us: wilder@hiwwt.org.uk.