Pond Builder

Here's the north-east corner of my house. The construction going on is to turn the apex of a long slope into a garden pond.  I gave up trying to dig it by hand and got a trackhoe in here and dug it in one day.  It has a dirt bottom but the sides are hand laid concrete made from native pebbles (the hill I live on is glacial moraine).  The top layer of concrete was washed away to expose the aggregate. It took me an entire summer of nights and weekends to complete it. The 'thing' at the lower left is my cement mixer.

This is my Monet bridge that I started a year before the pond was put in.  You might think that it would have been easier to build it after the pond to save me all the excavation work BUT I can never plan a garden and then execute the plan without making a lot of changes as the garden begins to shape up.  Harder? Yes. But I think it looks better when it's done.

This is where I gave up on handigging the big pond.  Dirt is already being piled where the hill will eventually provide for a waterfall.  The major part of the pond was dug by a track hoe.  It took about 8hours to dig the pond and build the hill.  The hill come to pond edge and drops about 10 feet.

The dirt removed to form the pond was pushed up the west slope to form a steep hill suitable for a future water fall.  - Still looking for large rocks -

Completion of pond 3 looking from the large pond.  When the main pond (4) is full, it's water level is above the rocks in the foreground.  When the main pond is emptied for cleaning, this one holds the fish and water lillys until they can be put back.

Construction done, large rocks, stones and gravel was put in place.  Planting the area was the final step.









Below:  Pond 4 is nearly full.  Just about one foot to go.  The emergency pond #3 is nearly covered.  This is the ponds first spring.

Looking east across Pond

Pond is nearly complete