Making A Flowing River with a Pond Part 1
A pond adds focus to a garden and is beautiful both in the day and at night.
Can I Make It Myself?
So, you’re thinking about making a pond complete with a river and running water but you’re not sure if you’re up to task. Can you make it yourself or should you hire professionals to do it?
This in depth article will guide you through the process and hopefully help you make that decision. However, before we answer the question ‘Can You’, maybe we should ponder on the question ‘Should you?’
It may seem like a ridiculous question to ask. Why shouldn’t you make such an amazing feature? After all, it would be wonderful additional in any garden. On top of that, having the sound of water flowing throughout the day would be heavenly. How can there be a downside to it? Is there a way to mitigate the con’s of having it?
Pro’s to Having A Pond:
it’s a beautiful feature in any garden.
the sound of water is relaxing and can also help mask the sound of traffic and other noises if you live in the city.
you can keep fish in the pond
you can have both green and flowering pond plants. Who wouldn’t want more plants?
the pond will attract wildlife to your garden
Con’s to Having a Pond
the sound of water may attract frogs and toads looking for a place to mate. This may be especially true if you have a very forest/jungle like garden with plenty of shady, damp spots that they can shelter in during the hot day. Those who like frogs and toads may consider this a plus. However, the noise of the mating call was the reason I ended up removing my pond and keeping only the flowing river (tutorial coming). The mating call of the males were extremely loud and was happening almost every single night. This was followed by thousands of eggs discovered the next day which soon became tadpoles and u know what’s next. So why not have a lot of frogs? Having a lot of frogs in Malaysia unfortunately, may attract snakes into your garden. Yes, although rare, there are still snakes even in a city like mine. So, the pond became a source of anxiety as I would be spending hours trying to remove every single egg or tadpole or catch every single frog that would come.
Having a pond in an area surrounded by trees looks great but you will have to do regular pool maintenance as the leaf litter may end up being a source of nutrients for algae growth. Some might think that adding chlorine is a simple solution . However, adding chlorine may not be an option if you are also keeping fish in your pond. Removing leaves from a pond, however, is very therapeutic and you can use this time to get some Vitamin D so this con and actually be a pro.
Now that we have gone through the ’Should you?’, let’s answer the ‘Can you?’
The Hole
If you can dig a hole, you can. That is the hardest part of the whole project. It took me days, and a lot of work but it was extremely satisfying to see it fill up with water. All I used was a shovel, some buckets and a wheelbarrow. Be sure to remove all rocks and pebbles as these can puncture your liner.
If you have friends and family that can help, it would definitely speed up the process. Figuring out where to put that extra soil is something you might want to plan for as well.
The Dimensions.
Our pond was about 45cm at the deepest part. There wasn’t much risk for evaporation as abundant trees surround the pond, and it rains almost daily, so the pond water was refilling naturally. The pond should be deep enough and with some cover so the fish have somewhere to escape to should a bird try to catch it.
Why are there terraces?
Terraces were made to place water plants on as some require more shallow water. I did not have a lot of pond plants due to it being a favourite spot for the frogs to mate and lay their eggs on. However, I would have added much more plants on the shelving to cover the black pond liner that was quite visible and not very attractive had that not been an issue.
The Pond Liner
I used a 3 x 3 m, High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) pond liner as it is resistant to UV, oxidation, chemical reactions, tear-resistant and puncture-resistant.
Can I piece together 2 smaller pond liners?
I was quite excited to test my pond once the hole was dug but my large pond liner had not yet arrived. I did however, have narrower once which I thought I could tape together and test. Yeah, I know, pretty silly of me. I did manage to get a few hours to admire the pond but it obviously did not last. It fell apart and I knew that I would just have to be patient. Once the bigger one arrived, I kept it under as a little backup layer.
More on how we did it coming soon…
