Few things will make a more dramatic visual impact in your backyard than a water garden. A beautiful pond filled with and surrounded by plant life, rocks, water falls and a few fish swimming around inside the water garden makes for a tranquil backyard retreat and focal point.
Building a backyard water garden yourself requires a good deal of sweat equity, so the last thing you want is for your pond to leak or to be located in the wrong place for the flora and aquatic life. These tips for building beautiful leak free pond will help you choose the right location for your water garden, design a water garden suitable for your backyard landscape and build a leak free, long lasting pond in which flora and aquatic life can flourish.
Choosing the right location for your water garden is the first step when building a pond. The ground needs to be level, or made level to avoid pond water loss or overflow from excess rain water. The amount of sunlight the backyard location receives must be considered, most water plants and fish will need around 6 hours of sunlight per day.
Don’t build the pond for your water garden under trees, you’ll have to constantly remove debris from the water garden that falls from the trees, plus the trees will block the much needed sunlight.
Locate your water garden in a spot that can be seen easily from inside your home and from backyard areas that you and your family are frequently in. The water garden must located near an electrical source for the water pump that will be in the pond.
If you want to attract birds to your backyard water garden, locate the pond near shrubs so the birds will have built in protection from predators and build the pond with a shallow end for the birds can bathe and drink.
If you want to have fish in your backyard water garden, consider the winter temperatures in your region. If you live in a region with cold winters and plan to leave the fish in the water garden all winter, the pond must be built deep enough to prevent the water from freezing.
Once you have chosen the ideal location for your backyard water garden, check with your local utilities to make sure there are no underground cables where you plan to dig. Also, check your city or town codes and ordinances before digging and installing any electrical pumps.
Now you are ready to design the size and shape of your backyard water garden. The easiest way to do this is to use a flexible garden hose and lay it out on the ground and move it around until you’re happy with the shape.
Once you’ve settled on the size and shape of your backyard water garden, decide where you will put the dirt you remove. Later, the dirt will be used to level the ground and/or mounded up around the water garden for planting, but while your digging, you need a location to place the dirt out of your way. Start digging your pond around the outer edges, working your way to the center.
Form at least two ledges as you are digging your pond. The first ledge at about 12 inches in and the next about 9 inches past the first one and so forth. Ledges inside the pond will make it easy to grow different varieties of water plants and make getting in and out of the pond easier for you. Dig the ledges almost vertical with a slight slope to the center of the pond, making the pond center the deepest point. The final depth of the pond should be 1 1/2 -2 feet in mild climates, 2 1/2 feet deep in cold winter climates.
Purchase the best quality, flexible pond liner you can afford and high quality padding or use carpet padding between the ground and the pond liner to prevent rocks and tree roots from poking holes in the pond liner.
Try to install the pond liner of your backyard water garden on a sunny, warm day, the heat will soften the liner and make it easier to work with. Carefully unfold the pond liner and stretch it out over the entire pond, keep the liner as smooth as possible and allow it to sink down in the center. Place some rocks around the outer edges of the pond liner to hold it in place and begin to slowly add water to your pond. The weight of the water will press the pond liner into place. Occasionally move the rocks around the edges to allow the pond liner to sink down into every nook and cranny of the water garden.
Once your pond has filled with water, leave it alone for a few days to make sure it doesn’t leak. Once the pond passes the leak test, you can trim off any excess pond liner or mound the removed dirt under the pond liner excess and begin to transform the barren pond of water into a beautiful backyard water garden.
