Designing a Newt Friendly Pond

The best newt friendly pond designs contain lots of submerged plants with leaves under the water as this gives the animals plenty of safe areas in which to hide. You also need to encourage lots of live food in a pond designed for newts to give them plenty to eat. Ideally, leave fish out of the pond as even goldfish will outcompete newts for food. It is though possible to have a newt friendly pond design area in a fish pond where the fish cannot enter.


The best way to watch newts in your pond is with a torch at night. At this time of the day the newts are very active and out hunting. I certainly wouldn’t want to be a tadpole when there is a hungry newt around! Frogs and newts tend to be mutually exclusive, as they will eat the eggs and tadpoles of the other species.

Newts have quite a wide-ranging diet. Anything moving that is small enough to fit into their mouths will be consumed. Gnat larvae and other small invertebrates are a particular favourite.

Newts will lay their eggs on true submerged aquatic plants, normally choosing areas where the leaves are particularly dense. Hornwort, Elodea crispa and other fine leaved plants are ideal for newts to spawn on. Newts are pretty good parents and although they don’t lay as many eggs as frogs the survival rate is normally very good.

Newts make a great addition to the pond. Children and adults love them and many is the time I have been out on a nocturnal newt hunt, torch in hand!

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