Building a Water garden pond ... the basics

Building a water garden pond: choosing the site and liner material (either preformed pond liner or flexible pond liner) is far easier than you might think but planning and care is paramount. If you're thinking about building a water garden pond for yourself or if you are wondering why your last efforts to build a garden pond were such a disaster, there may be just a small key point of technique in the installation of the preformed or flexible pond liner that you may have been missed. Like most things building a garden pond well initially takes some planning and consideration and unfortunately digging the hole and filling it with water is not enough.. Start by building your water garden pond properly on paper or in your mind first. do some basic things well and you'll have a perfect garden pond that will give you and your family years of daily enjoyment..

Even before starting the planning be aware that your water garden pond will be a miserable failure unless you're prepared to spend a small sum of money on necessary equipment like a pond pump, a pond filter and an ultra violet light for algae control

building a water garden pond ... Planning & preparation

Start the process by considering the site for your pond and do this as follows

• on site

• with a tape and a piece of hose or even string

• be able to map the shape out on the ground itself (eg using a hose pipe).

This will help you see how your build a water garden pond ideas will look from various parts of the garden and especially the home. For 6 months of the year this is from where you will see it most. Some people like to draw a plan of the chosen site to test out their landscaping ideas. Others will like to sketch out the landscaping ideas as they would see them, perhaps on tracing paper over a photograph of the site from a typical viewpoint.

building a water garden pond: Imperatives

• Build a water garden pond in full sun especially in the UK.
• Build a water garden pond away from trees and prevailing winds that could carry leaves into the pond.
• Avoid trees with poisonous leaves. In the UK these include Willow, Elder, Poplars, Laburnum, Yew and Oak.
• Avoid too much exposure to prevailing winds.
• Build a water garden pond to avoid boggy areas in your garden.

In thinking how to build a garden pond consider now whether you will have waterfalls, fountains, filters, lights and other accessories like Ultra Violet Clarifiers (critical for algae free crystal clear ponds). You will need an adequate power supply to build a garden pond and the connections to cope. This is one of the largest cost factors to be taken into consideration when discussing and exploring your landscaping ideas. You'll also need to consider accessibility to a water supply. Think about building a waterfall from the excavated soil (more than you imagine) ... whatever you do keep the top soil. This soil can make an excellent bed for a stream or cascading waterfall.

Building a water garden pond in tricky landscape situations

you're building a water garden pond on garden terrain that is sloping away from the main viewpoint or if you are planning a raised water feature, formal or informal, in your landscaping designs then hammer in several pegs around the extremities of the shape level with each other that will indicate the final proposed water level. This will give you some idea as to how level the site is, how much water you will see and how much building up is required.

If the garden pond is flush with or below the surrounding terrain then conduct one or two exploratory excavations to check for possible bedrock and to provide peace of mind in respect to drains and power conduits. Now that you've considered the important essentials it's time to decide upon the type of pond you're going to construct ... will it be a flexible liner you'll use or a preformed (ready made) pond liner?

building a water garden pond with preformed or flexible liner? What is the difference? 

For stable pond conditions you really need to build a fish pond with a surface area of at least 3.3 square metres or 30square feet. This often makes it unwise to buy a preformed pond. The array of preformed ponds you see stacked up in racks at the garden centre that look so vast will appear significantly smaller once planted into the ground. Using a preformed pond liner is an easy way to build a water garden pond nevertheless. Click the link to see how easy building a preformed pond is

building a water garden pond with flexible pond liner

By the way the best material to use in USA is EPDM flexible rubber liner made by Firestone and in the UK Butyl rubber liner is best

How to estimate the size of a flexible liner ... refer to this diagram

• Add double the depth to the length and breadth of the proposed pond size. The minimum depth ought to be 18inches to 2ft or half a metre.

• Build a water garden pond with a simple shape and avoid sharp indentations to the shape as these take up liner material.

• If you do have dramatic curves inwards on the shape like a traditional scallop shape on a formal pond, measure around the shape to allow for the extra liner you will need.

  Building a water garden pond ... Cost aspects.

There is not a lot of difference in the cost square foot between preformed liners and flexible pond liner ponds ... whatever you use to satisfy your landscaping designs and ideas. Properly installed the life expectancy of both preformed or flexible liners is pretty similar. In fact if you were to build a garden pond according to the coffee-table books in a situation like a perfectly level lawn against a backdrop of a solid stone wall, with a neat stone edging surround and a rockery at the back, the time and effort of installation is pretty much the same too. Unfortunately these situations are quite rare in most gardens.