Building a Pond

This sloping grass lawn is the future site of the water garden. We took advantage of the slope when we built our creek. The area receives sun most of the day.

We dug our pond by hand. First we removed the sod which we added to our compost pile. Next we removed the sprinklers. Finally we dug the hole.

Once the hole was dug we lined it with old newspapers. We saved newspapers for several months to do the job. My dad was visiting for a few days and decided to help with the newspapers. The grey roll in the background is the liner.

Unrolling the liner was a big job. We mail ordered a 45 mil epdm liner. The liner weighed several hundred pounds.

Each rock was individually placed on the liner. We moved most of the larger rocks by levering them onto a piece of plywood which we in turn levered onto peeler logs cut to two foot lenghs. We were then able to roll the plywood over the top of the logs to a place close to the final location for each rock. We eased the rock off the plywood and carefully positioned it by hand. Although we had a couple of close calls, there were no injuries and none of the rocks wound up in the bottom of the pond.

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