This pond is my third and my favorite; I have adored each one of them. This one isn't quite a year old yet and I have not planted the rock garden yet, but am looking forward to that and getting lilies and other lovely plants for the water.
How many ponders are out there ?? List your names - Update!
Oh, I love your pond! Is this the third on this property, or at other locations? We would love to have elevation changes! Our lot is totally flat, so we had to build ours up to make our waterfall and stream, yet try to make it look natural. We think we did that, although we now see the benefit to elevation changes. Before the pond we had never looked seriously at any home without a perfectly level lot!
The split waterfalls are one of our favorites! I don't think I have seen a pond with the narrow horizontal pond at the bottom. I love it! What kind of filter, liner and fish do you maintain?
Thank you for sharing!
mel
Thank you, Mel. This is my third pond at the third place I have lived in since 1995. Had to go with hilly since that is what I had to work with, and of course, I love it. My liner is just regular very thick pond liner and I am not sure what the brand of pump and filter would be, since someone else did this one for me. I have about 53 koi that I moved from my last pond and they are doing wonderfully. Soon it will be spring and I can again begine to feed them. I feed them dog food, believe it or not, and since they are between 1 and 12 years old, I guess it does them no harm. I can give you a bit more information about the filter, description wise. At the top, there is a small pool with a large black plastic container. That contains something that looks like lava rock. Then at the very bottom of the pond, there is an underwater system with a black plastic filter that pulls out, and a buff-puff like filter that has to be hosed out. That one is about the size of a furnace filter.
arbelle, what kind of dog food? Just wondering sometime it's very hard for me to get pellets for my goldfish but we always have dry dog food.
Funny, that's what my dad feeds his catfish in his pond back home. We have done that for years! They line up to eat it!
Your pond and filter system sounds like our Aquascape system. Easy maintenance.
thanks,
mel
Here is my pond. The pic was just taken the other day, so it is not really pretty. It looks much better in spring and summer and also needs cleaning up. However, you get the main idea. I have two water features. The first is the waterfall.
The second water feature is the jug.
5 fiber glass pond two Small one ready to put in this spring
Awesome Rylaff! Just beautiful and so natural looking.
Beautiful!!!
Judy
Okay, I'm new and just starting to dig the pond. After a few wheelbarrows full of glacial till they call soil around here, I'm enlisting some strong adolescent males to do the grunt work. I'm willing to pay to save my back. The plan is for the pond to be about 1500 gallons with the deepest part 3-4 feet. It will be a part of the garden. We'll be including a sloping rock 'beach' on part of the front edge since I have two dogs and they're going to approach the pond to drink whether I want them to or not. Might as well make it easy for them. Also, believe me, I already have plenty of rocks for this part. I'm currently experimenting with making my own landscaping rocks out of pieces of broken old cement patio and hypertufa to use around the edge of the liner. So far they look great so I'm encouraged to try some more. I'm addicted to projects so this may take awhile. Here's a photo of the general area I started to clear for the pond last year. I can tell you that as of now all the plants in the foreground and many to the left have found homes in other areas of the garden and the pond outline is about 3 times bigger. Ha! Let the addiction begin!
Oh how exciting! We started ours Easter weekend 4 yrs ago! The best thing we did was rent a small backhoe for $150 and dug it in just 3 hours! The dirt that came out was used to build up a large waterfall and stream area behind it. We have pix of the whole process if you would like to see them!
We did not put "ledge" rocks at the edge when we finished the pond, but added some nice sturdy ones later, as people are drawn to stand at the edge, and were pushing the edges too much. We love the look now, but it was an afterthought. We used LARGE thick, flat rocks so that kids and adults can stand on to admire, but keep the liner and edges safe.
We were going to do the beach also, but the same issue arose, with pushing the rocks downward, and exposing the liner. The only way that we saw that effectively done, was they poured a thin beach of cement, and "set" the beach pebbles in. They don't look quite as natural, but they don't move, can be scrubbed of debri.... which will appear, and the dogs have a sturdy footing!
ooopppps. more than you asked for, I got on a rant, but we did alot of research on the subject, and toured over 80 ponds to design our own.
TexMel - I for one would appreciate you starting a thread, posting pictures and telling us all about building your pond. I know it would be very informative and especially useful to those of us who want to build a bigger pond.
Thanks very much for the ideas you've already shared.
Judy
OK! I worked on it, and now it is complete! See the new thread .... from the Beginning--- is ready.
Thanks for encouraging me.
mel
TexMex,
Thanks for the post about your pond building experience. I'm thinking for the beach I will cement some of the larger stones we've dug up onto the liner in a random but close together pattern. These will hold the smaller stones in place and I'm hoping that I can make it look 'natural'. I'd considered renting a backhoe to do the digging job, but they go for much more than 150$ around here and to get to the pond area I'd have to go through some other areas that I don't want to mess up. The boys have confirmed for March 18, so that's the day! Look forward to seeing your pictures of the process!
In my "other files" somewhere, there are pix from some pond tours that we have taken. I think that there are pictures of the beaches that different people have created. If I run across them, I will send them to you. Good luck with your plans!
Mel
TXMel
If you find them why don't you start another thread entitled something like
Our Pond Tours - Other People's Beaches
They will give people ideas. Or am I trying to keep you too busy??
Judy
Funny. Ok. I will do that! My hubby says they are on a disk around here somewhere! I know there are nearly a hundred pictures! We had such a good time on the pond tour looking at everyone elses oasis. There were very small, simple ones to elaborate ones valued more than some homes!
mel
We bought a pond-equipped house last October. Said pond was in horrible condition, but after mucking out hundreds of pounds of... muck... and a home-made mechanical filter plus volcanic rock about 1' deep on the bottom as a bacterial filter medium and some other work, I've got the water clear and the fish happy.
I have several bunches of hornwort spreading nicely, plus dangling ivy as an additional oxygenator, and will be adding more floating and rooted plants as the weather warms up.
You can see several of our 4 goldfish (length 10" or so) in this pic, but the one chinese catfish is -- as usual -- hiding. It's about 14" long and quite a sight when swimming.
Pond size is 7' diameter. Depth tapers down to 3' in the center, not counting the volcanic rock. Everything is shrouded by two Oaks, 100+ years old, that drop debris into the pond, but the fish eat most of it and the rest is plant fertilizer, so that's more of a plus than a minus, not to mention the nice shade those Oaks give in hot Florida.
Rob- I really like the idea of your pond. Gives the impression of a never ending drop off. Looks like a spring.
I put in a pond a few years back. This will be my 4th season with it. Gosh it doesn't seem like it's been that long. I started out with a 200 gal preform. I wanted a 500 gal liner pond but my husband wouldn't help. We farm, and he was always too busy. But then on THE VERY DAY I finished my 200 gal preform, he borrows my uncle's backhoe for a farm project. I begged and begged for him to dig me a pond while he had the backhoe here. He got pretty upset with me, and finally gave in. I guess he thought he would "show me" by digging a very LARGE hole. LOL My pond ended up being 2000 gallons. :) I have since converted my preform into a rock garden with a "bubblin rock" Here is a pic of my pond from last season. I've got one more view to send, in this one you can't see my waterfall. Jenny
Here is the other view. Jenny
put a small one in last year it's the one hiding behind the flowers. planing on another this year but my wife brought in a big dog to the family so i'll have to rethink the design Jerry
Jenny and Jerry, Both are very nice. They both look like little Oasis' in their space. I can never get enough of looking at ponds. No 2 are alike!
jerry you have to read http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/459321/
BigDaddy is my DH. We've "gone to the dogs" but still manage to have a small pond which we totally enjoy. Of course from time to time they do go swimming, but this litle pond with the raised sides does discourage it.
Judy
This message was edited Mar 12, 2005 12:58 PM
yes i have, there are plenty of good ideas for different types of ponds and fountains. I'm looking forward for the ground to thaw so I can get out and enjoy some creativity Jerry
Hello all!
It's been sometime since I had the chance to stop by.
I'm in San Diego, CA.
Trying to learn how to deal with real weather.......... : )
I'll post some pics of the pond tomorrow...
mine is the natural look
Dick
Pixy
it is a concrete pond 6' deep in the center & it is supposed to look natural :-)
no i did not put it in, it was put in by the previous owners
i only inherited it
during the rainy season it is filled by a seasonal creek & overflows into the river
during the summer i have to supplement with the pump
Dick
That is gorgeouse. You won't find many in Texas that look that lush! Ohhhhhhh to have ferns! AHhhhhh
Saturday I put in my very first pond. Or should I say I drug Crimsontsavo over here to help me put it in. Because I have no clue what I am doing. Next we are gonna get some plants planted around it. It's actually kinda funny I haven't even finished this one and I am already planning two more. LOL.... I will try to get some pictures taken to scan in so you can see. The pond is in the shade about half of the day and gets the morning sun the other half of it. Anybody got any suggestions on types of plants????????
Happy Gardening,
AligaterAngel
strever you have one great looking pond and the surrounding areas are very lush great job
here's a small flower from last year. I was a little disappointed because the blooms only lasted a few day's
I cleaned all the winter muck out of my ponds saturday and they look muddy because they were all stirred up when I took the pics. This is the larger one
Here is the other one
CC you got some green showing up. Same here is the freeze tonight dont topple them again
CC- that looks very natural- like a small pond under the foot of a cave!
Thanks that is what I was going for I like stuff to look natural I just wish you could never see the liner but I used preforms and The only time that happens is in the summer when all my plants are bursting over the edges.