The creation of the pond was made possible by a $1,400 Adirondack Garden Club grant to the St. Luke’s Pollinator Project. The pond is ringed by a verdant array of native plants that provide a habitat for local pollinators and other wildlife.

The pond is the most recent of several gardening undertakings by the Pollinator Project on the grounds around the church. Theresa Cruz Lillegard, who is married to St. Luke’s Pastor Andrew Cruz Lillegard, said that she started out gardening in the front yard of the church, but when she learned about native plants, she was inspired to use the “big campus” of the church grounds to support wildlife and pollinators.

“How can we help nature instead of planting these plants from, like, China and Europe that don’t really feed the wildlife?” she said. “One of the best things you can do (to help the wildlife and the pollinators), besides not using pesticides and planting natives, is provide water.”

When she saw a notice in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise that the Adirondack Garden Club was accepting grant applications, she decided they should try to build a pond.

Father Andrew Cruz Lillegard of St. Luke the Beloved Physician Episcopal Church and his wife, Theresa, pose in front of the first native species garden that the church planted. They now have several such gardens, along with their most recent addition of a wildlife pond. (Enterprise photo — Galen Halasz)

The St. Luke’s Pollinator Project applied for the Garden Club grant last spring. They were awarded the full amount of money that they asked for.

“It was our first grant-writing experience, so they were so generous,” Lillegard said.

The Garden Club grant paid for underlayment, a pond liner, native plants, rocks, signs and Adirondack chairs, built by Pastor Eric Olsen and his wife Susan, according to Lillegard.

Lillegard said she was grateful for the appreciation they felt from the community as they worked on the project. People drove past as they were working and shouted their encouragement.

“They really were so supportive for, like, a novice gardener and somebody who’s just learning about native (plants) and pollinators and ecosystems, so (we) could not have had a better experience in the Saranac Lake community,” she said.

Along with the support from the community, the Village Improvement Society awarded the church a Certificate of Appreciation for making the pond.

Church members pitched in to help make the pond by donating money and bringing natural materials from their own backyards and gardens. One person brought a piece of driftwood. Pastor Andrew Cruz Lillegard thought that 25 to 30 people in the congregation must have helped with the project.

The process of creating the pond began with clearing out the nails, broken glass and weeds in the space and then digging out a three-foot deep hole. The had to dig twice since the first attempt was too shallow. Next, they put in the underlayment and pond liner and covered everything with rocks and sand, some of which came from a roadside in Onchiota. They had to make sure that the rocks were stable and didn’t puncture the liner. Finally, they placed the pants and filled the pond with water.

By this summer, what started as a small shaded alcove outside the church went from nothing more than a patch of weeds and ferns to a picturesque, botanically diverse wildlife pond.

Some of the plants surrounding the pond include Golden Rod, Golden Alexander, Hairy Beardtongue, Marsh Marigold and Obedient Plant, along with the ferns that were there from the beginning, according to Lillegard. She had to research extensively online so that she could make sure the garden had the right plants in it. She said she hadn’t realized before that for plants to truly be native, they have to be from the same state as the location where they are planted. She had to figure out what animals were native to the area and what plants would support them when they came to the pond. She also had to make sure she got shade plants because of the low sunlight the pond receives.

Lillegard said she also learned how to design the pond itself just right. The pond had to be shallow and “very accessible so nothing gets stuck; everything can crawl out. A lot of things overhanging for habitat and crevices in rocks.”

Lillegard wishes she had a camera set up to see all the animals that come by. In the vicinity of the pond, they have already found a family of raccoons, a fox, a variety of birds, lots of insects, deer tracks and substantial toad and frog activity. She can tell when the deer have come because the water level in pond gets lower when they drink from it.

For the frogs, there is a hibernaculum by the right-hand corner of the pond, which is a hole filed with sticks and leaves to give the amphibians a warm, protected place to overwinter.

Lillegard said people were worried that mosquitoes would use the pond as a breeding site, but she thinks that with all the other insects, amphibians and birds coming to the pond, the mosquitoes have been kept at bay.

The pond is named St. Clare Pond after a spiritual sister of St. Francis of Assisi, whose statue greets visitors to the pond. The area where he stands is called the St. Francis Garden, which the church blessed with the blessings of the animals last year.

“People feel a connection with him because of his connection to nature,” Andrew Cruz Lillegard said. “Because of his great love for animals and all of that. It’s a very unique way of recognizing this is about — the term that gets thrown around these days is creation care.”

He described creation care as “being true stewards of God’s creation and His gifts.”

“We’d love to see people sitting here and just kind of relaxing in this space,” Theresa Cruz Lillegard said. “It’s a very restful spot, I think a beautiful spot … just to spend time enjoying it.”

They hope that this pond will inspire other people to do similar projects with native plants on their own properties.