Build a Garden Pond
Garden ponds have been the most attractive features of some of the most elegant gardens in the world for millions of years. It is one of the defining elements of a garden right from the time where other things didn’t exist. There are many ways and designs to build a garden pond.
In order to make your house or backyard look more aesthetic, you can add a garden pond to your landscape. The sound of water flowing will definitely makes yourself feel naturally soothing and can also reduce stress, plus improve on your overall health.
What you need:
- Pond lining material
- Shovel (for larger pond, you need to rent a backhoe)
- Pump
- Electrical cord
- Stones
- Stakes
- Water stabilizer
- Chalk
Method:
- Firstly, you need to determine the area that you have chosen for building the pond. Analyze whether there are trees, rocks or any kind of special soil conditions that need to be removed or made into a landscape design for your pond surrounding. You should also think on whether the pond is a small scale pond that has the water feature that can emerge from a slope or a large pond that comes with incoming stream. After you have decided on all of the above, you should be able to chalk an outline of your design onto the ground.
- Next is to begin land excavation, for a small pond you need to construct at least three to five feet in depth. If you need to use a hard tub liner, slide it into place and make sure there is no leakage over the sides of the pond into the space beneath the pool liner. If a flexible liner is chosen, you have to ensure that there is enough overlap to un-dug ground until the task is done. These liners require a water plant or two in order to keep them submerged right until the air is worked out. Besides that, you can also use stones.
- Then, you need to attach the pump onto the tubs pump outlet hole. It can be hidden among the water plants and you may also lay some weed fabric into the streambed along with washed stone for keeping it in place. Once done, you need to lay the pump hose along the bed to the start of the stream before adding larger stones around the hose.
- Remember to add water plants and be consistent with the choice of plants surrounding your pond. Ferns should not be used if you are in a dry climate and the same goes for cactus, it should not be used in a wet forest environment. Make sure you choose a suitable kind of plants for your landscape.
- Finally, you need to turn on the water and do a test run on the operation of your new garden pond. You can add more accessories to the pond later on if the need arises.
Additional Reading:
http://watergarden.com/pages/build_wg.html
http://www.wickes.co.uk/content/ebiz/wickes/resources/images/gil/91.pdf
http://www.ehow.com/how_4443333_build-garden-pond.html
http://www.cheshirewildlifetrust.co.uk/documents/advice_ponds.pdf
Image Credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zayzayem/3940381731/
