Autumn gardening - Water garden

From September onwards, it's a good idea to remove dead leaves and debris from plants near the pond margin or overhanging the water as this stops decomposing vegetation building up in the pond. You may want to put a net over your pond to keep out large leaves, but remember if you have wildlife using the water a pond can inhibit frogs, toads, newts etc from accessing the water. Equally, remember not to clean out the pond completely as many eggs, grubs and larvae need old vegetation and silt in which to hide and survive the winter. If you are too tidy you'll lose all your mayflies etc.

A good depth of water is an important guard against freezing conditions, so keep your pond topped up. In very cold winters, where a heavy frost occurs for ten days in a row, the overall effect can be to create ice over water that is six inches thick and that, in turn, affects the pond's chemistry. To help keep your pond alive, you should make ice holes daily to allow oxygen into the water, but never ever make holes in the ice with a hammer because the shock waves can kill wildlife and may even split the pond-lining. Nor should you use salt, anti-freeze or chlorine. The easiest way to make the holes is to place a metal saucepan full of hot water on the ice to create ice holes - but tie some string to the handle so you don't lose the pan!

Autumn is a great time to divide some types of aquatic plants, for example water lilies, which should be cut back to around three inches from the base and to remove any annual plants from the pond as they will rot and pollute the water.

Stop feeding your fish after the water temperature has dropped to below 50 degrees. They will become dormant and not need winter feeding.

Autumn pond photograph by Ray_chel, used under a creative commons attribution licence