Starting A Small Garden Pond

Keeping it attractive and trouble free takes work but with a little extra care at the planning and building stages you can create a pond that s almost maintenance free.

Starting a small garden pond.

It is best to put in plants in special aquatic plant pots which have mesh sides. Dig out an area for your pond according to the plan that you are following. Even a washing up bowl is big enough to be a wildlife pond. Above ground ponds can be built in any water tight large container.

Line the interior of the pond with the pond underlayment and liner. Dig your pond so the the edges gradually taper down if possible. A backyard garden pond with running water floating plants and darting fish can make a bland space breathtaking. Plant up your pond.

This will help to keep the pond healthy and clean. These galvanized water troughs are a popular choice right now. Avoid placing the pond where runoff from rain will run into the water. Your pond will need an access area for frogs and other creatures to get in and out.

Build up the waterfall and fill in the area around the pond with rocks to make it look more natural and hide the liners. Wildlife will come to your pond of its own accord. Submerged pondweed is vital to help the pond stay clear always use native plants in ponds rigid hornwort and whorled water milfoil are recommended. The space you dig should have a depth of at least 2 feet.

For this pond we re using large flagstones filling in and supporting them with smaller beach pebbles. But the rspb says that any water is helpful. Great plants for small ponds include miniature waterlily nymphaea pygmaea helvola lesser spearwort ranunculus flammula starwort callitriche stagnalis flowering rush butomus umbellatus click here for more plant ideas. Below you will find the steps for how to build a small pond.

I made my above ground pond by building a raised garden bed and inserting a prefabricated pond form like the one pictured above also called a rigid pond liner. This pond was built in an old hot tub. This will depend on the size and depth of the pond if you need to buy materials like rocks to line the pond and the cost of any landscaping and plants both for the pond and surrounding it. We re also using egg rock and pea gravel.

And the wildlife themselves seem to agree. Gather the necessary materials like pond underlayment pond liner a shovel coping stones a filter system and pond plants. Use a very low nutrient soil you can buy special soil for ponds mixed with grit. You could build an inground 4 6 foot pond using a pond form and a submersible pump for a few hundred dollars.

We ll use pond foam to seal things together. How to build a small pond. Choose a location a miniature garden pond should be located where it can get four to six hours of sunlight. The wildlife trust says that you should have a minimum of 4 5 square metres of water which would be a pond about 6ft across.

You only need one or two plants. When the hole is dug make sure there aren t any stones or sharp objects that could puncture the lining. A natural slope from the water s edge is the best solution.