garden ponds

Hill and colleagues have studied the wider impact that garden ponds might have on biodiversity. In one paper, published last year, the researchers counted the different species in a total of 50 garden and non-urban ponds in Oxfordshire. The rural ponds had a noticeably larger diversity of species, 172 to the garden ponds’ 99, but that doesn’t rule out their significance. It’s still a large enough selection of plants and animals to suggest that garden ponds could act as refuges or stepping stones for wildlife in urban landscapes, the authors wrote. Plus, the most diverse example of the