Pond Tipping – Bringing Life Back to the Pond Field 🌊🐸🐟🐄🦆

At Lower Blakemere Farm we’re no strangers to tipping. You’ve heard of our Piggy Bank and Hedge Fund – now it’s time for Pond Tipping. Not about chucking rubbish in, but about tipping the balance back in favour of life, biodiversity, and community.

We’ve got an old farm pond that’s lost its way. Over the next three years, with your help and ideas, we’re going to turn it into a living, breathing, multi-purpose pond – for cattle, for fish, for frogs, for bugs and bees, for birds and ducks… and yes, for humans too.

The Vision 🌱

Imagine a pond where:

  • Cattle come down to drink, but their access is managed so the banks stay healthy and full of plants.
  • Marginal flowers – yellow flag iris, marsh marigold, purple loosestrife – hum with pollinators.
  • Dragonflies and damselflies dance over the water.
  • Frogs, toads, and newts breed every spring.
  • Native fish – crucians, rudd, tench – swim beneath the surface, ready for family fishing.
  • Ducks drop in, swallows skim the water, bats swoop at dusk, and hedgehogs forage along the banks.
  • Native trees and wildflower meadow stitch the whole thing together.
  • People can sit, watch, learn, and enjoy a piece of regenerative farming in action.

A pond that’s not single-use, but balanced – where farming, nature, and people thrive together.

The Three Year Plan

  • Year 1 – Tip the Scales

    • Baseline surveys: water tests, plants, invertebrates, birds.
    • Tidy and clean sections of the pond where needed.
    • Plant native marginals and re-seed meadow edges.
    • Shape specific cattle drinking bays, so cows enjoy the water without wrecking the pond edge.
    • Trial NoFence GPS collars to train cattle where they can and can’t drink.
    • Begin work on water quality – including exploring a reed bed to ensure clean inflow from the yard.

  • Year 2 – Tip in Life

    • Stock carefully chosen native fish (crucians, rudd, tench).
    • Monitor water clarity and share results with Wiggly customers.
    • Establish wildflower meadow management (late cut, remove hay).
    • Run “Pond Watch” updates – frogspawn, dragonflies, fish, bats, swallows.

  • Year 3 – Tip into Balance

    • Fine-tune cattle access with collars – balancing grazing and biodiversity.
    • Develop community use: a couple of fishing pegs, a seating area, school visits.
    • Celebrate with a “Pond Tipping Picnic” – a day to show what can happen when you give nature, farming, and people a shared space.

  • What It Will Cost 💷

    We estimate around £15,000 to deliver this properly over three years:

    • Selective pond cleaning and bank shaping.
    • Planting and seed.
    • NoFence GPS collar trial.
    • Reed bed and water quality works.
    • Stocking native fish.
    • Habitat features and visitor access.
    • Ongoing monitoring and management.

    This isn’t a commercial farm project – there’s no way the farm could justify this spend on its own. That’s where Team Wiggly steps in: funding the work, sharing the story, and bringing our community along for the ride. The farm will contribute with planting, labour, and ongoing care.

  • Why It Matters 🌍

    Healthy ponds are biodiversity powerhouses. By tipping this one back into balance, we’ll create:

    • Wildlife explosions – dragonflies, frogs, bats, birds, ducks, hedgehogs, bees, and more.
    • Cleaner water – marginals, aquatics, and reed beds filtering nutrients and keeping the pond in balance.
    • Stronger farming – cattle benefit from managed access to natural drinking water, meadow flowers thrive under grazing.
    • Carbon storage & flood buffering – ponds and trees lock up carbon, buffer floods, and hold water in dry spells.
    • Community joy – fishing, picnics, school visits, and a living classroom for regenerative farming.

    This pond will become a flagship for wildlife and farming together – not just about food production, but about weaving people, animals, and nature into one healthy system.

Join the Pond Tipping Journey

Just like our Piggy Bank and Hedge Fund projects, we want you to be part of this. Over the next three years, we’ll share photos, videos, water tests, and stories – and you can help choose what to tip in next. Marginals? Fish? A duck raft? You decide.

Together, let’s turn a tired farm pond into a beacon of biodiversity.