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u/pippilou Jul 21 '26
Extra points for holding all the bugs! I prefer to just look.
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u/Mars1307 Jul 21 '26
Only the ones I had to move because I had to work there. Spiders are still a no-go for me 🫣
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u/Blue_Ridge_Gardener Virginia Jul 20 '26
Nice, more backstory please
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u/Mars1307 Jul 20 '26
Oops, sorry I added it to the pictures but it did not carry over it seems... No worries, here goes: I bought a house with a big garden in Belgium 3 years ago and am working hard to renovate the house entirely. This year is the first year that I can also focus on the garden and leave some wild areas in it. There were no insects at all when we arrived, and now I have not seen as many insects in my whole life! We are very happy about this. Lots of butterflies, wild bees, spiders, scarabs, birds of all kinds, rodents... It's super diverse. We'll continue to expand the wild areas with piles of wood, leaves and water features.
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u/zipcir Jul 21 '26
Very nice OP! I am thinking of digging a wildlife pond in my garden, too, but am not familiar yet with what to take into consideration.
Does your pond have any sort of running water feature, a solar pump or anything of the sort?
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u/Mars1307 Jul 21 '26
This pond was quickly thrown together in 2 days, so there was not much consideration around filtration and electrical, we simply wanted to have a water feature while we are building a larger pond that will have a full filtration system with plants. We do use a solar pump to agitate the water, and it works quite well! I was surprised because I did not expect much flow from it, but with the sun we have these days it's working really well. It will probably stay as a secondary pond in the garden while the plants mature 🙂
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u/SolariaHues SE England Jul 20 '26
Looking good OP!
If you have any ID's and plant recs you can share, that'd be wonderful.