Pond Dipping at Napier Gardens

When I was a child the southern side of Lynchford Road was lined with forbidding barrack blocks set in a sterile landscape of grass and asphalt.  Now, where once the traffic on Queen’s Avenue roared into North Camp, there is Napier Gardens – car parking hidden behind trees and shrubs, seats for lunchtime sandwiches, safe space for children’s play, light and shade, and the pond.

On 1 July the Trust helped St. Modwen’s – the local development company which has financed the project – and Year 5 at St. Mark’s school to investigate the pond’s wildlife.  It looked healthy.  Vegetation grew strongly: water lilies were flowering, towering reeds were reflected in the water, and the spires of yellow loosestrife glittered in the noonday sunlight.  But there was very little pondweed, the oxygenating plant which underpins a healthy pond.

The children plunged their nets in the pond and emptied their catch into water-filled trays for inspection.  Lots of water fleas, and little wriggly worm-like larvae of midges and other flies; water boatmen and mayfly larvae; but no larvae of the damsel flies and dragonflies soaring around the pond.  Flat ramshorn snails to scavenge decaying material and keep the pond clean.  Even one tiny fish.

And there are newts a plenty.  So we know the pond is far from dead.  But there are too many nutrients (it’s what happens when you feed ducks with bread – but who can resist a child’s delight as the birds take the crumbs) and not enough oxygen to score ten out of ten.

So perhaps just five out of ten.  But it is still a wonderful and peaceful place in the heart of North Camp village.

Alan Taylor

Trustee