Our little house on the northern prairie is in a place with a high water table. We live in the aspen parkland zone near the 51st parallel. Aspen parkland is a narrow strip of transition between boreal forest and the three prairie zones, tall grass, mixed grass and short grass. Because it is a transition zone it, we have many plants from both boreal forest and prairie. In our specific area, we have mostly boreal and tall grass prairie plants but we are also blessed with some medium grass plants. The parkland is an area rich in diversity. We have so many different birds nesting right around our yard that I can’t name them all. I will try. The types of birds I see in my yard every single day are ruby throated hummingbirds, robins, mourning doves, Baltimore orioles, cedar wax wings, American goldfinch, purple martins, wood, barn and cliff/mud swallows, nuthatches, juncos, chickadees, three kinds of kinglets, common red polls, pine siskins, yellow bellied sap suckers, northern flickers, downy woodpeckers, blue jays, marsh and house wrens, about 15 different little brown sparrow types birds I can’t identify, and often overhead, riding the thermals, sandhill cranes and pelicans. They arrive to enjoy the vast abundance of insects, seeds and nectar our nearby wetlands and wildflowers produce. Many are featured in this delightful blog.
When we first moved into our little house, we were confronted with a real eye sore. Our sump pump drains at least once a day, and in spring or periods of heavy rain it can kick in as often as once an hour. It pumps out about 20 litres of water each time. The result was an ugly brown bare place where nothing grew. It showed up as a sunken, slimy pest hole beyond out deck. I went looking for pictures of it and I found I have very few pictures because it was so ugly and embarrassing that I mostly took pictures around it. In addition to this bare ugly eyesore is a low ditch that drains rainwater from our typical three day prairie monsoon rains. Years ago someone tried to plant cypress trees but they are long dead, drowned, and one sickly potentilla bush struggles to survive in the muck.
The ugly bare spot and the ditch that is perpetually wet are visible in the background of this picture where I am showing off garden.
With so much to be done getting the neglected old house in proper shape, I just ignored that ugly spot as much as I could. One day, my husband noticed life in the muck. We had a stroke of inspiration. You can’t beat nature. She is far too powerful and she always wins. You can take advantage of her though, if you are willing to work cooperatively. And so we decided to create a pond.
In this view you can see potentilla in the foreground, a dead cypress tree and the bare ground eroded out by constant flooding from the sump pump hose coming out of the house at the front of the deck.
My husband noticed life in the small temporary pond created by the sump pump drain.
Our first step was to try to disguise the ugly drain pipes with something useful and so we planted a raspberry cane near the deck. This is raspberry starter cane in the first year.
By the second season the raspberry cane was taking off and spreading just as hoped it would.
The water did not hang around if the input was low. It would drain off, soaking the gravel/sand in the scouring area. The grass would start to creep in only to be washed away as soon as the next heavy rain took place. While we were out shopping for other things, we found a pond liner under-pad on sale for next to nothing so we grabbed it. We ordered a proper pond liner of the correct size from Amazon. It would precisely fit and go over the scoured out area.
It was lot of digging. Anyone who visited ended up doing some digging. Over the course of the second summer we got the pond dug out to our satisfaction. We made many trips to collect suitable pretty local rocks to prevent the liner from moving. We felt like we were getting somewhere by the end of the summer. The pond liner stopped the scouring. The water from he sump pump is ground water and therefore hard, but rainwater from the roof is collected and sent via another pipe into the same area. The pond has an overflow channel that directs water into the low ditch. This keeps the water level in the pond constant. The pond is maintained by the sump pump drainage and is regularly flushed out by rainfall off the roof. We had a stable pond! On our regular walks we began searching for native plants with appealing shapes and forms.
We soon found ourselves with a lush growth of algae. Yuck! We began bringing home buckets of local pond denizens, snails, beetles, water striders and the like to try to control the algae. We soon had a marvellous flourishing of pond life. We worried about mosquito larvae but a few passing dragon flies ended that issue and we now grow dragon fly larvae in abundance. These ferocious hunters live as the apex predators of our pond ecosystem. Several of the water plants ‘took’ an we soon had lily pads, bullrushes and sedges in pots.
The drainage from the overflow ended up creating a constant wet zone in the nearby ditch. We decided to extend the pond area to have a wet meadow in the ditch. A wet meadow would be lot easier to maintain than a wet soggy ditch that is often impossible to mow. So we began looking for plants that inhabit areas that are soaking wet in spring and subject to flooding, but dry up in late summer. We transplanted individual plants and collected seeds. It has been a labour of love. Each year we see small improvements in our pond and wet meadow garden as lawn is replaced by local native plants. Because they are native plants, once established they need no care. This spring we were positively delighted and astounded to discover native orchids like our wet meadow. I moved the grass around and found these lovely late yellow lady slippers (Cypripedium parviflorum).
We have stopped mowing the drainage ditch/wet meadow. It’s pretty messy yet but you can see a flash of yellow among the dandelions going to seed marking our lovely orchid. And we found this. I think it might be a showy lady slipper orchid. If it is, we will have two spectacular native wild orchids growing in our wet meadow. It will be years of tending before our pond and wet meadow look exactly like the ponds and wet meadows of the surrounding area. It will take time and persistence to get rid of the lawn grass and the other nonnative plants. But they really have no chance to compete when people aren’t helping them. And so we are hopeful. And we will have less lawn to mow.
Possible Showy Lady Slipper?
Our Pond and Wet Meadow Our little house on the northern prairie is in a place with a high water table. We live in the aspen parkland zone near the 51st parallel.
