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In A Nutshell
- A class assignment became a habitat. In the fall of 2017, 14-year-old Maggie Johnson dug a pond about 12 feet across by hand in her family’s backyard in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, for a high school agriculture class, her father wrote in National Wildlife magazine.
- The wildlife found it within weeks. American toads showed up a few weeks after the pond filled in spring 2018. Today the family records gray treefrogs, green frogs, fishing spiders, moths, butterflies and hummingbirds around it.
- It cost about $160 to start. The family spent about $160 on a liner, plants and tools, then about $100 a year on plants and $600 on a fence in 2025 to keep cats away from the frogs.
- Research on small ponds points the same way. Studies of farmland ponds in England suggest ponds punch far above their size for freshwater wildlife, and that newly dug ponds keep gaining species for a decade or more.
In the summer of 2017, the backyard behind the Johnson family’s house in rural Virginia was a patchy lawn. The loudest thing out there was the crickets.
Then the family’s 14-year-old daughter picked up a shovel for a school assignment. Nine years later, the same spot hums with frogs, spiders and hummingbirds, and the animals found their own way there. The story, told by her father in National Wildlife magazine, lines up with what ecologists have measured in small ponds for years: give still water a chance, and life tends to arrive faster than people expect.
How Did A School Project Turn Into A Wildlife Habitat?
With a shovel, some research and one wet spring.
In the fall of 2017, Maggie Johnson started building a pond for her high school agriculture class in the Shenandoah Valley. She researched the design first, then staked out a circle about 12 feet across and dug it by hand. By spring 2018, it was full of water.
The rest of the family helped shape the edges with soil, rocks and plants. Before they had even finished, the first visitors showed up. “Just a few weeks after the pond was filled, the first American toads found it,” Maggie, now 23, told the magazine. “Since then, the pond has continued to grow and evolve every year.”
Which Animals Moved In?
Frogs first, then a small food web.
On warm evenings, gray treefrogs trill and green frogs call from the water. Six-spotted fishing spiders hunt on the surface. Ruby-throated hummingbirds feed at the cardinal flowers on the bank, and a snowberry clearwing, a moth easily mistaken for a tiny hummingbird, works the lobelia. The green frogs also ambush nonnative praying mantises.
Maggie’s parents planted native species such as buttonbush, joe-pye weed and pickerelweed around the edge, and later added white water lilies to shelter amphibians and small aquatic insects. The garden is now a Certified Wildlife Habitat with the National Wildlife Federation. In her father’s words, “we went from seeing an occasional wandering toad to now having a fully functioning ecosystem.”
Why Do Small Ponds Draw So Much Life?
Still, clean water is scarce in many landscapes, and ponds fill that gap.
A classic 2004 study in Biological Conservation compared rivers, streams, ditches and ponds in farmland in southern England and found that ponds made an outsized contribution to regional biodiversity. A European review of pond ecology reached a similar conclusion: collectively, ponds support more species, and more scarce species, than other freshwater habitats, and they act as stepping stones between larger bodies of water.
New ponds also keep improving. A 2025 study led by University College London researchers, also in Biological Conservation, surveyed water plants in 56 farm ponds in eastern England. Among ponds dug one to two years earlier, the researchers counted 11 plant species in total. Among ponds dug 11 or more years earlier, they counted 39. The authors note that plants in created ponds have to arrive from nearby water, so colonization is slower where ponds are isolated.
Could Anyone Build One?
Probably, and it does not take much money.
The family says they spent about $160 on a pond liner, plants and gardening tools, and add about $100 of plants a year. In summer 2025, they put $600 into a fence to keep out cats, which helped the frogs. They have found that with a working ecosystem, the pond does not need a filter.
One backyard pond is a story, not an experiment, and results will depend on climate, nearby water and what grows around the edges. But for Maggie’s father, the lesson is simple. “For me, this is a story of hope,” he wrote.
The crickets are still there. Now, after dark, they have to compete with the frogs.
