Plan Well for Your First Pond or Plan on Redoing It the Following Year

In 2007 I finally got approval to landscape the large back yard.  It was perfectly flat and surrounded by 5'-high board fencing.  I had pretty much let the landscaper design the pond with little input from me.  I did want some contouring of the ground in front of the fence to  create visual interest.  I asked for a stone paver path from my back porch to the pond and garden area and flat pavers around the pond for a clean edge.  Oh, and I decided to have a putting green put in as a thank you to my husband for this wonderful gift.

Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of the process for the first landscaping and pond construction (2007).  The pond was only about 1500 gallons and at the most 24" deep with a shelf around the perimeter. The next second picture below shows the fall, very small in the upper right as it was originally built, which was not changed.  But the surface area of the original was half this size and depth. The putting green took up a 15x19 foot oval in the garden area.    

Damien used the putting green twice in three years. In 2008, the year after the pond went in, I had them return and dig up the pond, deepen it and make it more than twice the surface area as shown above.  Again I asked for pavers, and a nice clean pond edge.  As the photo shows, it never happened.

During 2008-2011 the large perimeter rocks sank into the underlying earth, causing (among other things) the skimmer to look as if it were jacked out of the ground.  The liner next to the skimmer was pulled down with the stone and the pond was in danger of overflowing.  It was dangerous to walk around the edges as the smaller stones were becoming unstable. 

About this time I discovered a wonderful online gardening site (DG) with lots of experienced ponders.  I began to learn all that I had not even known to ask about in the beginning.  As a result, I removed about 2 tons of two-inch gravel from all but the very deepest end.  This was done one five gallon bucketful at a time. It made keeping the pond floor easier to clean, getting rid of an area that harbored sludge and potential harmful bacteria.

I never sat by my pond as I had imagined, as it was so uninviting to sit by.  And, to say the least, it was impossible for my rockers.  By 2011 I had had enough and asked for bids from two landscapers.  The original one and one other.  The first one told me that there was no settling, despite the obvious overflow about to happen.  I asked that the putting green be removed with most of the sand underlayment and replaced with at least 18 to 24 inches of good garden soil.  I was told 6" was enough.  The trees they planted in 2007 were dead. No matter what I asked for, they pushed their own agenda.  The second one told me how I could improve what I described as my goal, and their answer was: "Any way you want it, we will do it till it is right."  No problem choosing there.

They began  by pumping out most of the pond.  The large rocks had to be manually removed from the pond before the liner and underlayment could be rolled back to see the sodden earth beneath.  They discovered that the overflow had never been connected and all the water had simply saturated the earth around the pond, causing massive settlement.

The sodden earth was removed and back filled with crushed asphalt and then sand, followed by compaction to assure as solid a base as could be had in earth with a fairly shallow water table.  

The rocks that had been removed were replaced with rectangular cut slab rock.    

Two by three foot slabs were laid down horizontally with uprights of the same dimensions. 

Increasing the 'footprint' of the heavy stones, in addition to the compaction, greatly reduced the likelihood of sinking.

I elected to have the underlayment and the liner placed over the rock, rather than under as before, in order to have as flat a surface as possible for washing and vacuuming.  The pond was refilled, the overflow piping was connected, the surrounding ground was backfilled and compacted, and a post (not shown in this picture) was sunk by the skimmer to attach my power input to keep it out of snow and west.  Fine gravel was laid around the skimmer to keep that area tidy and stable as this was the area we used to set up the vacuum, clean the skimmer, and remove the pumps for winter.  The final steps were to lay the flat pavers slightly over the ends of the vertical stones at the edge of the pond, build a little 

patio over half the area of the removed putting green, and mound soil on the remaining area of the green for more garden space.  

Not exactly as I might have designed it in the beginning, but a place that now

invites you to grab a book and a glass of wine or tea, open the umbrella, and soak up the peace and beauty.