As we all know, nature takes her time in creating most things. Coral reefs, deltas, most islands, mountains, lakes and ponds. Occasionally, she will speed things up with hurricanes, tornadoes, landslides and volcanoes. But for the most part, it is a time consuming process.
Of course, if you are landscaping a yard you want to be done in one season, maybe two. Especially if you are putting in a fish pond. These are great for just relaxing beside and adding an interesting feature to the overall look of your yard. We decided to put a small pond in our backyard 10 years ago. A pond 6 feet by 12 feet right beside our patio was an ideal size.
For this we needed a pond liner, a pump, a hose from the pump to the waterfall, and lots of rocks. Plus strong backs to dig the hole. The strong backs were courtesy of my two sons. We planned to dig 22 inches at the deepest since, in our town, anything deeper than that has to have a pool permit. It also has to have a 6 foot fence with a locked gate. Being extremely frugal(cheap), instead of actual pond liner I bought a water proof tarp. I thought that since it was water proof, it would hold the water with no problem at all. I was right. The pump was purchased at Canadian Tire and the rocks were picked from fields and construction areas around our town. They were hauled back to our house in a small Plymouth Horizon hatchback. Not the best way to do this job. We had to load them in a small wheel-barrow and take them from the front street around the house to the back. We had about a ton of rocks to move.
To mark the pond shape, we used a garden hose and cut around where the hose lay on the ground. We carefully lifted pieces of sod, put them aside and started to dig. The ground had not been turned for at least 20 years and was rock hard. However with the strong backs (my sons) and brilliant supervision (me ) we soon had a decent hole going. It took about an hour to get the hole about 15 inches deep and then...... we hit the clay. SOLID, ROCK HARD CLAY! And did I mention the tree roots? NO! We also hit tree roots. Another 2-3 hours of slogging and we had the hole. I was exhausted just watching them dig.
It was now time for the liner. I had read somewhere that you should put down a cushion lining in the hole before the actual pond liner. Fortunately we did not have to buy this. My wife hated the carpet we had in the dining room, so we tore it out and used the underlay for the cushion. Then we lay the tarp material in the hole and smoothed it out as best we could. We overlapped the pond edge by approximately 18 inches all around the pond and started putting the ton of collected rocks into place. This was fairly easy compared to the digging(or so I am told). Actually the easy part was just coming up. Put hose in pond, turn on water. Wait for pond to fill. Put in pump, add hose for waterfall, plug in pump. You now have a beautiful crystal clear pond with a gorgeous waterfall. If Canadian Tire has sold you a strong enough pump. If not you have a beautiful pond with a small dribble of water.
Off to Canadian Tire, I went to exchange the pump for a stronger model. Of course the stronger model needed a different size hose. Better buy that also. Home again, home again , put the pump in.
Next blog: The Pond
