Tuesday, September 22, 2009

How to Build a Pond - Here's what we did!

pond 09  As I sit at the dining room table, I can look out at this pond. In all seasons it is beautiful to watch.  Life is drawn to water.  I have 6 large colorful gold fish and lots of new little baby fishes.  Did you know that fish do have personalities?   By consistently talking to them and wiggling my finger in the water at feed time,  the fish have learned to come to me, sometimes "kissing" my fingers.   Children delight in getting "fishy kisses".  And, lately we have discovered that garden slugs are a delicacy that the fish will scramble for.  Making a pond is not difficult. It is very hard labor, but if you can handle a shovel and a wheel barrow, you can make a pond.  I did most of the digging of this pond.  It is 6 feet by 11 feet and the depth goes from 33 inches, to 24" to a  10" deep planting shelf at one end.   It is lined with fish safe EPDM rubber.  The liner weighs about 90 pounds. It took both Ted and I  to carry it over to the pond, to center it into the hole.   On the outside we placed large local pink limestone slabs that overlap the pond edge by a few inches.  I have several water lillies and water irises  that nicely overwinter in the pond.  Fish are dormant at 45 degrees.  Since the top 9 inches or so of the pond freeze in the winter, we  keep a simple aquarium aerator connected to it all winter.  This keeps a little space open so air circulation continues. In the spring the fish and plants wake up and with a bit of cleanup and the insertion of a pump and attached filter it is ready to go!

1 comment:

  1. What a pretty pond! Good for you for doing most of the digging! My husband got that job here :) It looks so nice in front of the pergola. You stone edging is similar to ours. They really do add so much to the garden.

    ReplyDelete