Over fifteen years ago, we built a large catfish pond. One end was kept shallow–about 20′ x 40′–with the thought that it would naturalize on its own. Sadly, it never did. So we put in a few waterlilies from a local area. Then they took over the pond, and we had to rip them out. Now what?
I still wanted a natural wetland area, especially after I found a Coryphaeschna ingens, or Regal Darner exuvia on one of the sticks protruding from the water in the shallow end. An exuvia is the cast-off “shell” of a dragonfly nymph that is left after the nymph metamorphoses into the adult dragonfly form. In any event, I wanted to make sure the shallow end of our pond continued to host such species. Below is a photo of the Coryphaeschna ingens exuvia. It was huge and had absolutely gorgeous stripes! As a nymph, it would have looked like a small alligator hunting through the leaf litter in the pond.
So I researched shallow water/emergent/shelf plants that are native to our area and found a wonderful resource for North Carolina: NC Wetlands as well as a PDF on Native Plants for Coastal NC Wetlands and Retention Ponds. The PDF was particularly useful to me as it gave me a very good list of plants and their characteristics.
Out of the list, I decided to purchase the following:
| Common Name | Scientific Name | Sunlight Requirements | Notes |
| Duck Potato | Sagitarria latifolia | sun to light shade | Spikes of white flowers produced all summer. Reproduces rapidly. |
| Arrow Arum | Peltandra virginica | sun to part shade | Green flowers on a clump forming plant. |
| Pickerelweed | Pontederia cordata | sun to part shade | Spikes of plue/purple flowers all summer. Tough plant. |
| Lizard’s Tail | Saururus cernuus | sun to part shade | Spreading with pendant spikes of white flowers in late spring/summer. |
| Blue Flag Iris | Iris virginica | sun to part shade | Blue flowers, 3′ tall. |
| Carolina Water-hyssop | Bacopa Caroliniana | sun to part shade | Prefers wet banks and has small blue flowers. |
I got the plants, planted them, and the next morning, they were completely destroyed! They’d all been uprooted and mostly eaten. What??!?
I bought a few more, planted them, the same thing happened. The culprit? Turtles. And especially a snapping turtle.
Plants are expensive. But what was I to do? Perhaps that’s why the area was always barren of vegetation. So…I took some low fencing and fenced off a small part of the shallow end of the pond.
Once I got the fencing in place, I bought some more plants. The photo above shows the Pickerelweed growing nicely within the turtle fencing. And in wandering around our property, I found some Duck Potato, Lizard’s Tail, and Carolina Water-hyssop so I dug up small clumps of those and added them after expanding the fence. I always made sure I just took a small portion of what was growing so there would still be plenty of plants along the streams.
Here is some of the Carolina Water-hyssop I found–we had huge matts of it along two of the streams at the edge of our woods. So I took a small clump and transplanted it to the edge of the pond. When the leaves are bruised, they smell heavenly with a citrusy-eucalyptus scent.
That fencing did the trick. Thank goodness. Everything is growing nicely now. As it grows and I acquire more plants, I’ll keep expanding the fenced area. Some folks have said it will reach a point where the fencing will be unnecessary. I beg to differ. The Snapping Turtle will decimate it no matter how many plants are in that area, particularly in the spring when the plants are just started to sprout again for the season. One turtle can wipe out the entire area in a few days. In fact, that may be the reason one of our streams has no real vegetation along the banks except willows–I’ve seen a huge Snapping Turtle wallowing around in that particular stream. That’s one stream that doesn’t have any Pickerelweed, Carolina Water-hyssop, Duck Potato, or Lizard’s Tail.
However, we don’t want to get rid of our “snapper” or the other 14 various pond turtles that we have so the fencing will have to stay. I’m hoping the plants and a few sticks will hide it from being too obvious.
One more thing to note: I’m going to be adding more sticks around and through the fencing. This will serve multiple purposes:
- Hide the fencing a little more
- Provide perches for birds wishing to drink (we generally have drought conditions in June/July/August so a lot of birds use our pond during the summer)
- Provide perches for dragonfly nymphs to crawl out of the water and metamorphose into their adult forms.
We have had issues in the past with flocks of birds perching on plants around the pond and breaking off plants to the point of killing the vegetation. So sticks stuck through the fencing at an angle may provide perches (other than my plants) to avoid this. I’m doing my best to protect the Pickerelweed and Lizard’s Tail in particular.
We’ll see how the pond and our new “wetland area” does the rest of the summer and next year. I’m really hoping it thrives. If everything works out, I’ll keep expanding the planted area. And I really hope to see a lot more dragonflies and damselflies each year.
