How to Design a Pond for My Garden
- 1). Decide on what type of pond you'll eventually build. Ponds can be simple water features with or without aquatic plants. You can also design your pond with fish in mind. If you want fish, the size of the pond will be dependent on the size of fish you choose. Goldfish can live in a smaller pond than koi, for example. With goldfish, a pond with a depth of 2 feet will suffice. While koi should have a pond that's at least 3 or 4 feet deep.
- 2). Choose a shape for your pond that will integrate with your garden. Choose a shape that is aesthetic pleasing to you. Kidney shapes give a more natural look than perfectly circular ones. The pond should weave between larger plants or shrubs in your garden, letting them grow out from the pond's shore. Take care, however, in choosing a location where too many leaves will fall into the pond. Careful placement will cut back on your maintenance.
- 3). Plan on a minimum depth of about 24 inches. Lay out your pond's design with shelves, so that the pond has shallow and deep places. You can have the deepest in the center then have a mid-depth shelf encircling that and a shallower shelf around the edge. Or, you can have your pond follow more of a swimming pool's design by having the front end the shallowest, then midway it drops to a deeper shelf and has the deepest at the back.
- 4). Plan to dig out the pool and use a plastic liner for the bottom. By measuring your pond at its widest and longest, then adding in the depth twice, and adding in a couple of extra feet for overlap, you can roughly calculate how much pond liner you'll need.
- 5). Plan on where you'll dig trenches for laying in plumbing for pond skimmers, filters or pumps, if you want a small waterfall. In planning, consider where your electrical lines will run for connecting a pump. Design your waterfall placement at the top end of your pond with slightly higher elevation.
- 6). Plan to surround your pond with stones or other coping. This is to both hold down and cover the top edges of the pond liner, giving your finished design a neater appearance. Consider the type of stones you'd like to use--copingstones, flagstones or other ornamental rocks. You can find rocks ranging in shades of white to black to a coppery red.
