This is really slow work, and today I needed a break. I've been saying that this is the year we're getting a pond, but before the actual digging on the pond starts, I have to get the "patio area" done, so we can see what kind of area we have to work with. Then we can figure out pond shape, etc.

The patio area is carved from the side of a hill, and the reshaping of the back yard has been going on for a few years - two years ago: professional contstruction guy with a large Bobcat; last year: husband with rented backhoe-loader; this Spring - me with wheelbarrow, pick-axe and shovel. I'm doing the "finish work". This includes moving a zillion wheelbarrows of soil, and building the rock wall terraces.

This is what I've been up to:

Click to view attachment

I have to admit to taking many breaks, and eating chocolate bars to keep me going. The weather's been beautiful - too hot for this kind of work, actually. Spring is popping out all over, and I can't wait to be planting around the pond - and learning about water gardening

Oh that's going to be so lovely!! The rock walls are gorgeous!! It sure looks like hard work, and I couldn't help but chuckle over your chocolate breaks!! Better than coffee breaks!!

I hope you'll make a diary of this, keeping us posted on your progress! (On the pond, that is - not your chocolate consumption! )
I shouldn't tease you... after you finish this project you'll be so strong you'll come and beat me up!!

Debbie

Good luck on the pond

Chocolate breaks

Oooo, looks great! What a wonderful space to work with, although it does look like lots of hard work.

We are only planning a 6' square pond in our tiny backyard, but my youngest daughter says, "we're going to need some chocolate too! "

Hope you keep us updated.

I realized I probably should have posted this on the photo section, but then I realized the "help" I needed was a little encouragement. Thanks, Debbie and Little Peanut! You got me inspired again. I made some brownies for breakfast tomorrow - then back to the rock mine!

Just for the record, I am always terribly out of shape at the beginning of gardening season. My idea of winter sports involves sitting by the window and watching birds at the bird feeders, and sitting by the fire and drinking hot cocoa. But by the end of the gardening season -- well, anybody who messes with my goldfish had better watch out!

Brownies for breakfast!!! I'm comin' to your house for breakfast!!
Oh wait.. then you'd put me to work, wouldn't you.. I'll have to rethink this.
But wouldn't it be cool if Koko's members lived close enough to do that? How fast the work would go!!

I like your idea of winter sports! And with the snow up there, watching birds in the snow is so pretty!
Thank you for sharing this with us! Keep us posted!

Debbie

Ooh, fun, and what a beautiful yard!! I know what those in-progress projects are like. You just want them done already!

What sort of pond are you planning to have? Judging by the rocks I'd guess a natural type pond. Do you know what size it will be, and if you are building a stream and waterfall or anything? You are so lucky to already have a slope so you could definitely do a little stream and everything. I'm so envious, around here we have to build our own hills and slopes!

Hope you've been a little encouraged. You can check out the photo section to see my progress on my patio pond. I've found above ground is much easier sometimes. Hehe!

Wow, that is a whole lot of work you have ahead of you heare, Lantern - but worth every drop of sweat! There is nothing more rewarding than the finished product.

It looks like a nice piece of pond you are planning - are you having everything inground, or part of it above as well?

Yeah, what a great backyard and your surroundings look fairly rural with lots of trees and green, lovely. I took one look at that pic and when I read about wheelbarrows and shovels, well, better you than me lovey! lol Well at least it will keep you busy and active, and if the weather is nice and you are in no hurry, it could be quite an enjoyable way to spend a few hours, together with lots of coffee and chocolate breaks. Good luck and keep up the hard work. Keep us posted with updates, you have a big project on your hands.

Thanks everybody! It really does help to hear a little pep-talk from those in the know! I have also found that my fish cheer me on when I come in at lunchtime - or maybe they're just looking for . I am looking forward to seeing them in their new habitat - though that is MONTHS away at
this rate! I also find myself coming in and looking at other pond posts on Koko's - that's pretty inspirational, too.
jsrtist, hose fancy goldfish will have it made - I hear that usually people don't put them outside, because they are not as fast as the single-tailed ones - but I see you came prepared with a net! It is lovely on the patio, having your fishes there with plants all about.

Cometgirl, I have found that chocolate refreshment is not dependent on the size of the project. Chocolate is my substitute for coffee, actually - it also contains caffeine - and has been shown to have health benefits - ok, I'll go with that. A 6-foot pond sounds like plenty of pond - unless, maybe, if you want a herd (?) of koi. I'll have to check for your pond project, too!

Ranchugirl - The part with the rocks is really not fun. But today, I had to take down a part of a prior rock wall that had hens and chicks growing in it, which I put into the new wall parts - and that was fun. I really don't mind planting things, but stacking rocks really doesn't cut it.

Fishmerized - I may not be in a hurry to do the work, but I think the fish wish I'd get on with it!

The pond itself is going to be below-ground (for over-wintering fish) and will be as natural-looking as I can make it. We really don't know how big it will be, until I get the rock walls built and we know how large this "patio area" is. Then we will figure shape and size, though it will definitely have some kind of stream or waterfall coming off a hill. The rock walls are sort of informal, but not really natural, but I hope to blend them in with plants.

We actually live in the city, but are VERY lucky to have neighbors who have kept their land somewhat natural, and so it looks like it's more rural than it is.

You know what - I'm going to go and take a new picture, and post it in the "pictures" section. You folks have really helped keep me moving on this. Cheers!

Post the new pic here too please, or I might miss it. So hard to keep up with everything happening on here.

Here's a picture of the area from above: Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment ...and after some more wall-building.

You can see that I've outlined the currently proposed pond area. The large rocks on the side are the proposed spot for the waterfall. I think we will need to put a liner behind them, yes? There are several other, larger rocks that my husband has to help me move - so that will be rebuilt anyway. My cache of rocks to use on the walls is diminishing bit by bit - the walls take more than I would have expected!

We are thinking of making the pond round, because we have so many other twisty-turny shapes with the terraces. Are round ponds particularly harder to take care of?

We both went to a "Build a Pond" seminar this past weekend. We are leaning toward putting in something like that, with waterfall and skimmer, rather than with bottom drain. The concept seems like it's within our ability - at least for starters, for a garden pond with a few goldfish. I hope we're not shooting ourselves in the foot with that decision, but the bottom drains and associated plumbing seem so complicated. Maybe if there was a kit...

One concern was the large number of rocks they used (and, looking at my pictures, you can see that I'm in the running for "Queen of Rocks", so it's pretty hard to alarm me in that regard.) I can see a few rocks along the bottom, much as I have a scattering of pebbles in my aquarium - but I cannot imagine putting in the number of rocks they did, especially the large ones stacked up the sides. I've read too much on this site about the rock issue to be comfortable with so many.

Another thing they kept saying was how easy it was to keep a pond, almost no work. This reminded me of the lfs saying how easy it was to keep goldfish, how little care and space they needed. I know for me it will be absolutely no work at all, but that's because I define anything gardening-related as recreation, and enjoy it very much. I hope the folks at the seminar are going because they are like me, and will be able to put in the time to have a successful pond - but I fear not all will.

Anyway, still more rocks to go -- as soon as it stops raining!

That is going to be a nice area for the pond, Lantern! Still raining however, hm?

A pond can be less work, yes, if you are planning it right. I also think that a bottom drain is a ton of work, and you need a lot of plumbing with it. We do have bottom drains, but our ponds are above ground, and there isn't much plumbing involved. Just the drain, a pipe that leads the water outside the pond, and gravity does the rest. We made the pond bottom with a slight slope towards the drain, and you can do the same, even without a drain being actually there. That way, the waste will collect in that little valley on the bottom, and all you do to clean it up is a pump, that has a longer hose attached. Turn on the pump when it sits right in that lowest part of the pond, and the hose will carry the waste out of the pond.

I like to think that this is the most important part when designing a pond - the slope, or a lowest point in the bottom. That is where the waste and most of the leaves will go, and you have eliminated a ton of time that you otherwise would be using vacuuming the whole pond bottom. You still might have to do it occassionally, but not very often.

Rocks, yes, same reason for not using so many - things can sneak under and among them, and just sit there and rot. Not a nice thought...

Round ponds are not harder to care for, no. You get less water quantity, but other than that - whatever you like better.

When you do the waterfall, I'd suggest building the mount out of soil, making a 1 foot wide canal, so to speak (or however wide you want it), then line the whole thing with pond liner, and then use all the rocks for shaping the mountain, and also to secure the pond liner in the canal. You can locate rocks so that the water flow in the canal isn't straight - kind of like a natural stream, where rocks guide the water into little left and right swirls. Of course, you can do the wall with rocks as well, but if you do part of it with soil, you don't hate rocks that much at the end of the project.

One thing that keeps going through my mind while looking at your last picture - the pond area itself isn't in the lowest area of the property, is it? SImply because when it rains and all the water comes running to the lowest point, you don't want the pond to be that point, and possibly overflow with runoff. From the looks of it, your area likes the rain...

Wow Lantern! It's looking great! It looks much deeper when viewed from above in the first pic, I can't believe you moved all that soil with a shovel and wheelbarrow.

Good idea to go to that seminar, who ran it?

One thing that has always concerned me about pond liners is: how long do they last, what do you do when you get a leak and how often are leaks likely to occur?

Thanks for the comments and ideas, Andrea.

Actually, it's not at the lowest spot in the yard, it's kind of on a terrace of its own - there are lower levels on the hillside. Also the soil is very porous and water does not pool. I will be careful to have the "patio area" slope away from the pond a bit - and also down toward the next lower level. Water washing into the pond is definitely something to watch out for, anyway, but fortunately we rarely get rain that qualifies as a downpour.

We like your gravity-fed bottom drain idea. Since we are on the side of a hill, we could easily run a pipe down to the next level into the woodland garden - and open it up when we wanted to do cleaning. Hmmmm.... What keeps the water from flowing out normally - you must have some kind of valve that you open and close. I wonder if we could do something like that. Suggestions are most welcome. What makes me very nervous is having the valve somehow opened by accident while I am away, and return to find that I have lost all my fish!

Thanks Fishmerized! However, I must say that I can't take credit for moving all of the soil. It's been an ongoing project to reshape the yard. We hired a guy with a big Bobcat 2 years ago, and the past year, and we rented a backhoe-loader that my husband used for roughing out the general terrace shape. (He never did that before, so it was quite an adventure!) Anyway, I am just in charge of the final shape refinements and building the walls.

The seminar was put on by a local landscaper that sells "Aquascape" products. There are a lot of landscapers who do ponds using their ecosystem-style techniques. It was useful, but I am glad I've been reading about ponds on my own as well.

I don't know much about the liners yet, but they do put under-liners (kind of like a liner under a rug) beneath them to cushion against punctures. There are some that are more flexible than other liners, and you want one that is flexible so that it has some "give", again to prevent punctures from happening. Also, I hear that sunlight is bad for liners, so one reason they like rocks on the liners is to prevent sunlight from getting through. Still learning, so I don't have a lot of details yet.

Oh, I forgot to mention that part! You can open/close the pipe that goes away from the drain via a ball valve - hubby installed one that has 2 inch diameter, but any diameter will do, really. The bigger it is, the faster the water comes out. Those valves are really hard to open, so I don't think they'll open accidentally any time soon. And for any landscape guy coming by when you aren't home - put a fat note on it to leave it alone if he values his life...

About any underlayment for the liners, we went by a carpet outlet, and got soft leftover carpets for free or almost nothing. That would be an option.

I wish I knew something about ponds and could offer advie.
I just wanted to chip in that it looks amazing thus far and I really can't wait to see updated photos!!!

The pond looks great so far. I wish I could build a pond, even if it were for somebody else, just because it would be fun (I have a crazy idea of "fun").

Wow, you've moved a lot of rocks! I think the round shaped pond will look very nice in that curvy terrace.

I love seeing all your updates. Keep them coming!

Maybe if you've seen one rock, you've seen them all. But here it is, one more picture of my pre-pond work - I got the rock walls around our patio area built. Finally! Thanks to everyone who offered encouragement!

Click to view attachment

This weekend we're on to the next set of problems. My husband is going to be planning for the electrical and plumbing work this weekend. And once we've finalized where the pump is going to go - I get to tear down part of a wall and dig a trench! Two steps forward, one step back... Anyway, I'm sure we're going to be posting lots of questions and doing a lot of research on the electrical and plumbing aspects.

Also, I find that I have many fewer large rocks that I can line the edge of the pond with. I never thought I would run out of them! So I will be looking for creative ways to edge the pond - any suggestions are welcome!