Nature on our doorsteps: Ponds in the parks

In addition to the many rivers and streams that make their way through the area of South Dublin County, there are also larger bodies of lakes and ponds that occur in the County’s public parks.

Many of these were constructed when the parks were first designed and landscaped.

Some ponds were intended to be purely ornamental in nature, to provide a pleasant environment for visitors to rest beside.

Other ponds, however, were constructed with a particular function in mind.

The Corkagh Park ponds were excavated and constructed to help with slowing down and holding back water.

Water is redirected into these holding ponds to take pressure off the nearby Camac River when river levels are high. In this way, ponds and lakes can act to help prevent rivers over-topping their banks and flooding urban areas.

When river levels drop back again, water is released slowly from the lakes back into the river.

The new Dodder wetlands at Old Bawn will help improve water quality

The most recently constructed ponds in our public parks are the two new wetlands installed in 2022 in Griffeen Valley Park and in the Dodder Valley Linear Park at Old Bawn.

These wetlands have a very particular function, which is to improve the quality of the water flowing into them. As the water filters through these wetlands, the special plants growing in them will absorb any pollutants and will return cleaner water to the river.

Throughout the parks, in the years since ponds and lakes were originally constructed, these wetland habitats have become fringed with Irises and other reedbed plants.

These fringes offer good opportunities to a wide range of waterbird species to rest, feed, build their nests, and raise their young.

Open water also attracts numerous insects, which in turn attract other birds, bats, and frogs into our parks, as well as providing drinking water to foxes and hedgehogs.