garden pond

Building a Pond: Part 3, Waterfall & Fancy Bits

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The waterfall and finishing of the pond is a lot like putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle. Except with very heavy rocks. And you’re likely going to get wet.

Waterfall structure

I started with two large rocks that probably qualify as small boulders; they were heavy enough that had I picked anything bigger, I would have needed help lifting them. These I settled in place at the base of the waterfall on top of large scraps of liner for extra protection against punctures. I chose rocks a bit smaller than a volleyball next; using these to build up from the base and scattering a few around all the way to the top.
On the top tier of concrete blocks, I placed a single flat stepping stone in the center of the falls. The intention for this rock was to give the water a nice flat place to spill over and into the pond. A couple of large rocks were used at the back of this as an anchor. I also sprayed a little landscaping foam under it when I decided it was exactly where I wanted it and that it wouldn’t be moved.

You can get landscaping foam from the hardware store near the pond stuff. Unlike the house expanding foam, landscape foam is black, doesn’t expand quite as much and is sticky enough to hold small rocks or sand in place until it dries.
Once I had large stones and the basic framework for the falls in place, I ran tubing for my pump. In case you need to move your tubing later for some unforeseen reason (as I did), make sure you run it along the OUTSIDE of your falls and give yourself PLENTY of extra to work with. I went right up the middle with mine and cut off all the excess. I later realized I had only attached a pump for water flow and needed some means of filtering the water to keep it clean and healthy for all those frogs pooping in it. I purchased a UV filter to attach to my pump, only to realize my tubing would not reach the filter because it wasn’t submersible. >.<

This is what giving up looks like.

First I face palmed. Then I sat down and stared at my perfect, beautiful falls that I’d worked so hard on and now had to tear apart to get the old tubing out and run new. Finally, I sucked it up and just fixed it. I swear it doesn’t look quite as good as it did originally and some of the rocks I had stuck in place with foam, so I had to hide the foamy bits by turning these over or putting them in a different spot. I’m just glad I didn’t bury the tubing any deeper, or I probably would have scrapped the entire project in favor of a pondless fountain. So again, run your tubing along the outside of your falls and try not to put it too deep. Also, take care that you don’t place large rocks on top of it; ½ inch pond tubing (which is standard for small ponds) is not as thick walled or sturdy as garden hose, so it squashes and kinks fairly easy.

In my new setup, I have a UV filter sitting in the mulch underneath a spirea bush where it is fairly hidden. The submersible pump tubing goes into the UV filter and another piece of tubing comes out the other side of the filter; goes underneath the rock for the falls and opens at the back of that flat paver I put on top of the falls. The water runs over the paver, down several smaller rocks to the large boulders and into the pool.

Whew! Almost sounds like I’m describing a Rube Goldberg machine, doesn’t it? (Except not nearly as interesting)

It’s not a dramatic effect, just enough to give the water some sound and movement. Of course, the larger pump you attach, the more force your water will come out with and the greater the effect of your falls. I had hoped for a bit more flow and may add a larger pump in the future, but for now, this one will do.
I have noticed that the UV filter seems to do a very decent job of keeping my water fairly clean. It’s supposed to take care of bacteria also and there are no charcoal filters to mess with changing. Just switch the light out once a year, according to the instructions on the box. I purchased it from Amazon for $60.

You may need to move some rock around or spray a bit of foam along the watercourse of your falls if you want the water to travel along a specific path or to prevent leakage off the sides. Once you have the filter and falls in place and running, the rest of the setup mostly involves making the pond look pretty and covering any remaining liner.

It took me quite a lot of rock to frame in the rest of the falls and go around the pond in a horse-shoe shape. I left the end toward the yard open to make a pebble beach. I had read that if you are trying to attract frogs to your pond, they enjoy a nice beach to get in and out of the water and since my daughter is fascinated with frogs and toads, I built them a beach.

Visitor to our pond

I folded the liner up over the rocks on the garden side, filled that area with dirt and then trimmed the liner off level with the dirt. I covered any remaining edges with a line of

pine mulch. On the side with the spirea, I folded it up over the rocks again, trimmed it and then hid the edge with mulch.

The waterfall area was entirely covered with rock of varying shapes and sizes until very little liner was showing anywhere. Just fit, rearrange and play with it until you get a look you’re happy with. I don’t think there’s any real right or wrong here. Other than physics of course, don’t try and balance big rocks on top of a pile of loose smaller rocks, or you’re asking for a nice avalanche later… which could squish one of those prized frogs. You can use a bit of mortar or more landscaping foam to secure rocks in place once you like the placement if you want to make the whole structure more stable.

For the beach area, I left three of those flat concrete paver blocks underneath the fabric underlayment to give a solid base to the beach, since it’s fairly likely my daughter will be sitting there a lot and it’s also where I climb in and out should I need to get in and work on the pond or move things around. I didn’t trim the liner or the underlayment there, but let it spill out into the yard. I had purchased 3 bags of pea gravel and about 7 bags of river rock to cover this area and finish covering the liner in the bottom of the pond. The gravel stays in place on its own fairly well.

I did see a nice trick for keeping this stuff in place if you do have an issue with it staying put: Put on a pair or those rubber

dishwashing gloves (they are going to be ruined when you’re finished, but at least your hands won’t be), then spray a layer of landscape foam over the pond liner. Over this, press river rock into the foam in handfuls until the liner and the foam is completely covered with rock. When the foam dries, the rock will be glued in place. I did use this trick on the sides of the pond where I had neglected to build a good enough land-shelf for rock to sit on.

After the beach was built, I dumped another couple bags of river rock into the pond to cover the bottom. I hid the pump under a light, flat rock and scattered more river rock around and over it to cover the rest of the pump and tubing from view. A few handfuls scattered over the falls and along the sides of the pond makes it look more like a

natural creek setting and can fill any gaps where the liner still shows.

I haven’t seen any lilies to add to the pond at the store yet. I’ve had them in a pond in our yard in the past and they are wonderful to watch the frogs sit on and gorgeous when they bloom. If I get my hands on any, I’ll be sure to post pictures later. Since there was a lack of water lilies available, I opted to re-pot my bamboo and break a couple pieces off to tuck in to the rocks. Bamboo is ridiculously versatile. It doesn’t really even need soil to grow, it will grow in rocks right in the water. I don’t think this stuff will over winter here in Missouri, but I have two pots worth and don’t mind replacing it every season. If it does overwinter, it may become a problem child later, bamboo can be pretty invasive if not kept in pots where the roots are contained.

For now this is the finished project.

Top down view from the sidewalk

Like every other structure in my yard, I’m sure it will not hold up to scrutiny and will be constantly tinkered with the longer it remains. Perhaps for the next month or so though, I can call it complete and just be content to watch the kiddo enjoy her frogs.  🙂

Finally finished! ….. for now.

-B

Building a Pond: Part 1, Hardscape

/ B / 3 Comments

Our little pond project went better this time, (I hope) only a few hiccups along the way and a little flooding problem I’ll have to be addressing before it is complete. I’m going to be doing this in a series of posts, since it’s a rather lengthy process with lots of pictures. And just a side-note: Water-containing things… still not my favorite element to work with.

Since this was my first attempt at a pond that I didn’t just dig a hole and toss the hard plastic liner in the ground, I did some reading online and even checked out a couple library books on pond construction before I started. I ordered a PVC liner, some underlayment and landscaping foam from Amazon.com. I also hauled buckets and buckets of rock from our woods and surrounding yard to the pond site. I didn’t want to have to buy large amounts of stone; I was hoping to keep the budget for this project under $200.  At this point, I was in $49 for the liner, $20 for underlayment, $50 for a pump and $20 for landscaping foam; so right on target after buying a couple bags of river rock and some mulch to finish it off.

The first two days of this project were all about hardscape. I hauled rocks out of our woods, sometimes by the bucketful or one at a time depending on the size. Some of the really big ones I had to just roll out of the woods, since we don’t have a four-wheeler or other mechanical option to get them to the yard. My daughter helped by picking up smaller rocks and pushing a few of the larger ones back down the hill for me. >.<

I thought that I had more than enough rock when I’d finished, judging by the size of the pile I wound up with. It turned out that this was only about HALF of what I actually needed to do the job, so I spent another day during the pond construction rock searching and hauling. We are lucky cost wise that we have such a huge resource of rock available on our site. If you don’t have this kind of rock readily available, be prepared to shell out a couple hundred dollars to have stones of this size and in this quantity delivered to you.

Third day or so was spent digging. I used an old piece of hose laid on the ground to get a general outline of where I wanted the pond to be. I then stuck my shovel in just deep enough to leave a line in the ground around the hose so I had a rough outline of the pond. Since the back of the waterfall was going to butt right up against our sidewalk, I decided to work on that next. I figured the best way to make it stable would be to build it like a raised flower bed. You lay your first course of rock (in this case, cement pavers I had lying around from a previous project) at least halfway buried in earth. 

The ground slopes from left to right in this area, so I dug a shallow trench deeper on one side than the other to level the first three blocks in. For flower beds, I would usually just eyeball the level. For this project, I went inside and actually got a level and checked each block for level and then all three of the first course for level against each other. I can’t stress how very important it is that this first course be as level as you can get it. For every little bit the first course is off, the blocks you stack on top of it will be exponentially off level which can lead to a very unstable structure. 

I wanted the waterfall to come to the top of the sidewalk, so I stacked blocks 3 high in a pyramid, leaving a few inches for the decorative rock I’d be putting on top. Once I was happy with these later and sure I didn’t want to re-arrange them again, I glued them together with a little landscaping foam.

Now that I had the waterfall base in place, I started digging the pond. This is where I should have done a bit more research, because I made a mistake that is probably going to prove to be a real pain in my butt sometime in the future. I dug out the hole and then went back and built up shelves out of leftover dirt. Our soil is mostly clay, which sticks together and packs nicely, so this was very easy to do.

The CORRECT way to do this is dig a shallow hole for your first layer. Then re-mark the outline of the pond a few inches or so from the perimeter and dig a bit deeper to create a ledge out of undisturbed soil. Then mark a perimeter again a few inches in to create a second ledge of undisturbed soil. Finally, mark your last perimeter and dig even deeper. This is the center and deepest part of the pond where your pump would go.

When you finish it should look like this nice professional picture of the man with his level, which you will note, doesn’t look much at all like the sloppy hole I dug myself. I only put shelves in where I thought plants might sit later. Also, I had this issue with small children in my excavation. If you have a small child in your dig, I recommend you get them out, especially before installation of the rock or liner.
Those first and second layers of shelving in the example pond are not only for plants, but you need them to hold rocks in place that will hide the sides of the liner later. The website I took this picture from is a good example of how to do it right. My dig is an excellent example of what to do if you want to be standing in a pond half full of water later, saying to yourself, “How the hell am I supposed to get these rocks to stay on the sloped sides of this pond?” This was my first major mistake.

The depth of your pond will depend on it’s purpose. If you are only going to put a few water plants in, it only needs to be around 1.5-2ft deep. I kept mine fairly shallow so that my 3-year-old daughter was able to sit on the bottom without the water level being over her head. Had I installed this a year or two ago, I probably would have opted for a pond-less feature with a recirculating fountain.  The current pond is outside the fenced play area of our yard; in other words, it’s in a place where she should never be around it unsupervised. I built our pond with her in mind. It will home to frogs and a few water lilies, but no fish.
If you are building your pond for fish, it will need to be deeper- at least 3 to 4 feet for koi, slightly less for goldfish. Basically, the fish need a place below the frost line where they can hibernate without the whole pond freezing solid. Having fish in your pond may also involve installation of a heater and a pump to keep oxygen circulation going.

I didn’t finish the pond the day I dug my hole. I ran out of steam and time, so I let it set and planned to pick up where I’d left off the next day. Then it rained. A lot.  And I wound up with a big, muddy hole, ¾ full of water. Did I mention that clay is an excellent medium for holding water? In fact, they make natural pond liners out of clay and a bonding material that you can use to line your pond if you prefer not to use PVC or EPDM liners. It’s more expensive, but can be self-sealing and it’s a natural alternative to plastic or rubber. Large scale farm ponds around here often utilize clay as a pond base to hold the water in.
SO… after it finally quit raining, I went out and pumped and bucket-scooped the water out of the hole so that I could replace the muddy, mucky mess with my nice, clean PVC liner. The fact that the pond held water so well without any liner at all should have told me this would be a problem later. I was oblivious however and continued on, unhindered by mud or knowledge of hydrostatic pressure and ground water tables.
…to be continued…