How to clear out Your Garden Pond in Autumn

How to clear out your garden pond in autumn is a helpful checklist. Many of us have a pond in our gardens; they may be small, informal ponds full of tadpoles in spring; they may be raised formal ponds will majestic koi swimming around; or they may be a slightly murky green puddle.

For those of you with koi carp in your ponds, you will already have a specific cleaning regime, so this blog is not a ‘how to’ for you, although you may find one or two general tips of use.

How to clear out your garden pond in autumn is aimed at those who have less formal garden ponds; an ‘average’ sort of pool if you like, with waterlilies, marsh marigolds and duckweed. You may have a small fountain, or you may not.

How to clear out Your Garden Pond in Autumn – Why Autumn?

Autumn is a good time to clean out a garden pond, as any young newts, frogs and toads will have left and the water level is likely to be at its lowest after the warm summer. Of course if we’ve had a very wet summer, you may laugh hollowly at this latter remark, but, if you regularly look at your pond, you should find that as a general rule, the water level will be lower at this time of year than in the spring.

It is natural for still ponds to silt up and turn in to bog gardens. In the wild this would happen, with new ponds developing to replace old. In the garden, you will need to clean out ponds every three years or so to prevent this from happening. Clearing out your garden pond will also help to maintain good water quality.

Garden ponds do not have to be ‘official’ wildlife ponds in order to have a delicate ecosystem, so it is best to avoid extreme changes in the quantity of plants and vegetation in the water wherever possible. In order to leave a safe habitat for pond wildlife, a good rule of thumb is to remove no more than half the vegetation and plants at a time.

How to clear out Your Garden Pond in Autumn – equipment

What equipment will you need? That does partly depend on the size of your pond, but obvious items should include a net, soft plastic lawn rake and pond scoop (or similar) for scooping out vegetation and silt; a couple of trugs and buckets for water plants, silt, and so on. As for yourself pond gloves and wellingtons are highly recommended.

In fact, I would say that pond gloves are an essential part of your gear when clearing out your pond. These are heavy duty rubber gloves that cover your arms up to your elbows and beyond. Believe me it’s far preferable to wear these than have bare hands and arms, for all sorts of reasons.

Last but not least, you’ll need a camera. Or rather someone else will need a camera, so that they can take a photo of you falling in to the pond…only kidding!

How to clear out Your Garden Pond in Autumn – process

Begin by removing pond weed with the lawn rake and any floating dead vegetation with a net. Leave these on the pond edges so that creatures can crawl back in to the water before you dispose of the unwanted plants on the compost heap.

Scoop out excess silt from the bottom of the pond – this is likely to be the smelly part of the job, especially if you haven’t cleaned out the pond for some time. Keep a bucketful of silt to one side to re-introduce tiny but essential organisms into the pond. The remainder can be spread on your garden as it’s full of nutrients. When cleaning out a large pond for a client some years ago as part of the redesign of her garden, this was the point where I discovered my wellington boots had holes in…

Clean out the pumps and filters. Top up if replacing in situ, but store overwinter in your shed or garage if they’re not going to be turned on again until spring, to avoid frost damage.

Fill up the pond level with rain water, from the water butt, rather than using tap water which has chlorine and other chemicals added to it which are not good for the pond ecosystem.

Take this opportunity to check over your pond plants, dividing clumps of waterlilies, for example, and refreshing aquatic soil in the submerged pots.

If falling leaves from deciduous trees are an autumn problem, then cover the pond surface with a net. This makers them easier to collect and dispose of, and prevents them from rotting in the pond, where decomposition uses up the oxygen in the pond water.

If your garden pond is a reasonable size, it may be better for the ecosystem to only clean out half the pond silt and excess foliage one autumn and tackle the other half the following year. Obviously removing intrusive algae, dying and rotting vegetation from the whole pond would need to happen as and when needed.

And after you’ve tidied up and removed all the damp clothing, hopefully someone has made you a pot of tea and some homemade biscuits.