Should you keep water in your garden for wildlife?

As climate change brings more drought and more water restrictions to gardens in arid climates, many gardeners have closed down their backyard garden fountains and small koi ponds.

By doing this, however, wildlife such as birds, animals, and insects which have for their entire lives relied on that fountain or that little pond for their daily drinks of water are suddenly cut off. By this one change the very attractive habitat you created with your garden abruptly becomes a threat to their lives.

The birds, of course, may be able to fly to another source of water. Deer will wander away. Animals such as rabbits or gophers or mice may scurry off to another water spot or simply die out. And insects are likely to decide to join you inside your home.

So the issue of water in your garden becomes a real dilemma. Do you turn your garden into an utterly dry desert garden which is watered only infrequently and let wildlife find other solutions? Or keep your fountain running for at least part of the day?

Or perhaps you make a third choice which is to provide shallow pools of water for the animals which have made their homes in your garden. This would be my recommendation.

One example of a very shallow pool of water for birds and animals is in the photo on this page where a former fountain in a public garden has be converted to a wildlife water station with about an inch of water in it.

Today I saw another example on my Twitter feed – which I can’t find now—from a gardener in the U.K. where a ferocious drought has afflicted the eastern part of this normally damp, rainy, wet country. She had used a broad shallow dish/pot with no drainage hole in the bottom. Then added a handful of large stones in it as perches for birds. Water came next. It was less than one inch deep. While birds prefer to drink from trickling water, I’m sure this mini-pond could be a lifesaver. A variation on this is using a plastic plant saucer with rocks in it.

I’d suggest that you check the water every day when you water the plants you have in pots.  In 90+ Fahrenheit  (32+ Celsius) the water in your wildlife survivor mini-pond may evaporate by mid or late afternoon.

I’ll get back to the topic of waterless fountains in my next post.  It was after I saw what was going on at Arlington Garden, the photo above, that I decided to write about water and wildlife first.

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CLIMATE CHANGE UPDATE: A bit of important trivia from the weather website: it has been 90+ Fahrenheit north of the Arctic Circle in the summer of 2018! As I update this post in 2023, the temps at the the Arctic ocean have only increased and ice is almost completely disappearing.

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