Installing a pond
lisa October 26th, 2007
I liked my water barrel so much that I decided to put in a pond! I got a pretty cheap second-hand liner (~260 gallons) from a guy on Craigslist and proceeded to dig. Siting it was difficult - it’s going to be a garden pond rather than a fish pond, so I needed to put it in an area with good sun exposure, but at the same time I didn’t want to encroach on possible future veggie garden areas. I also needed to leave some room for the annual plant sale staging, which happens on my property every May.
In the end, I placed it next to the new driveway at the far side of the veggie garden. It was one of the few open areas left without a lot of tree roots, but close enough to the driveway that I knew I wouldn’t put veggies there. It’s still pretty shaded in that spot - gets maybe 4 hours of sun - but we expect to be cutting down some of the trees that are currently shading it, so it won’t be so shady forever.
Digging the hole was really hard - trying to get it deep enough in the right spots took forever. If I ever do this again, I’ll use a piece of flexible liner rather than a pre-formed liner.
Eventually I got the hole dug, then backfilled and put compost around the edges so I could plant some chamomile and clover seeds. Filled it with water and added a variegated sweet flag, a mint, and some water hyacinth. The mint was just a typical mint plant, not a water mint, and it didn’t do very well. Eventually I moved the plants from the water barrel garden — blue corkscrew rush (Juncus inflexus ‘Afro’), lizard’s tail (Saururus cernuus), and chameleon plant (Houttuynia cordata) — over to the pond,
since they’ll be happier there over the winter (actually, I think I have to bury one or two of them). I also found a floating solar water fountain on eBay, which has a battery and a light at night that’s quite nice. The solar panel is as much in the light as I can get it for now. The fountain only runs for a few hours a day, but hopefully that will be enough to keep the water from being too stagnant.
Haven’t seen any frogs yet, but the birds and squirrels seem to like it! Next year I plan to add some cattails and American lotus, and maybe some arrowhead.