As you can see in the photoalbum on the main page, my backyard is pretty much a grassless collection of shrubs, flowers, small trees and various groundcover. One large tree has an aesthetically-pleasing branch that spans out over the yard, making, I thought, a good "framing device" for the pond. I also wanted to be able to see it from the dining room window, and didn’t want to disrupt more plantings than necessary.

Using the Internet, I immediately began gathering information. There’s a surprising (some might say alarming) amount of information about pond-building, pond-maintenance, and the people who do it (known as "ponders"). There is also an apparently impressive industry built around satisfying ponders’ need for pond supplies, equipment, accessories, flora and fauna. I spent the winter months of 1997-1998 surfing pondsites for information, tips, products and prices. I printed out much of the material and assembled a binder full of facts, building instructions and resources.

Here is a list (and links) to some of the individual and commercial sites I found most helpful, just starting out:

Planning and Building Your Pond:

Plants and Fish

Products

Sadly, many of the sites I visited are no longer active—probably the folks who put them on the web are too busy caring for their ponds to update their sites! However, there is never a shortage of pond-related web material. The ones listed here are good places to start. Search terms such as pond, watergarden, or "backyard pond" will bring you to current sources.

There are probably easier ways to do it, but I decided to dig my pond myself, with a shovel. First I cleared the general area where it would be, and marked its outline on the ground with twine and stakes. Then I stopped working on it for a week, and spent the time peering at the outline, moving the stakes around, trying to decide what the best look would be. When I was comfortable with what I saw (a sort of elongated kidney shape), I started digging.

First I dug around the edge, to establish the shape I was headed for in my mind. Then I simply removed the dirt from the pond. Michelangelo said that his role as a sculptor was simply to remove the excess marble from the figures that already existed, trapped inside. At the risk of sounding like a loon, digging the pond was like that. I knew where shelves would be, and the steps down from the shallow to the deep end. (Maybe obsessing about it for six months helped.) In any case, it was just a matter of removing the dirt and carting it off in a wheelbarrow to various points around the perimeter of the back yard.

I ordered a liner and pump from an online store. When they arrived, I spread the heavy rubber liner over what seemed to be much of the backyard, and began the process of pushing it down into the contours of the pond. That done, flagstones (acquired legitimately from a local rockyard) were set loosely around the edges, and I filled the pond from the garden hose. The weight of the water pushed the liner snugly against the sides of the hole (with a few wrinkles mostly hidden now by rocks and plants). Once the pond was filled with water, I was able to trim the liner, set the rocks more firmly in the little shelf dug for them around the edge, and let the water stand for a week: dechlorination is vital to the life of your fish and plants.

That night it rained. In the morning, the pond was a brown mess of limey mud. I had neglected to rinse off the rocks when I brought them back from the rock yard, and the lime dust on their surfaces had all washed off into the water. I had to empty the pond, clean the liner, and start again. It was annoying, but instructive.

I ordered plants and snails from a couple of online stores, and purchased goldfish from a local pet shop. The fish are common, cheap "feeder" fish, comets and fantails. I decided early on that koi would not be welcome in my pond. Koi (in my less-than-humble opinion) are expensive, high-maintenance fish. When the raccoons come in the night (as they do), a $300 koi is just as eaten as a $1.50 fantail. I don’t want to have to "ride shotgun" on the pond all night to keep the varmints away from my pricey fish. With an attitude like that, I clearly don’t deserve koi.

The fish were small when I introduced them to the pond ("Fish, pond; pond, fish"), but this year they are up to seven inches long and quite impressive-looking. A blessed event in the spring raised my fish population from the initial seven to well over fifty. There was, of course, the initial Slaughter of the Innocents, when the adults devoured most of the offspring. Also, the pond was clearly overpopulated for a time, but when I offered the neighborhood kids the chance to take home goldfish as part of our annual block party, they were only too thrilled to help thin the herd (how thrilled their parents were with the new additions to their families is quite another story, however). In the end, enough survived that I now have a natural generation of about fifteen fish who have never known anyplace other than my pond.

The snails are thriving, and have grown to nearly golfball size. There are the big ones, creeping about the bottom; smaller ones that crawl over the underwater plants, and very strange conical ones that seem to propel themselves across the underside of the surface tension of the water.

The first year, I introduced tadpoles, who dutifully evolved into frogs. Unfortunately, a warm spell in January caused them to come out of hybernation early, and when I saw them hopping about on the rocks next to the snow, I knew they were Doomed. This year, I’ve added six tadpoles. We shall see what transpires.

Also in 1999, I moved the waterfall. Partly this was an aesthetic decision, and partly it was due to a problem with the plastic preformed pool I'd been using. Seems the soil under the pool subsided a bit, and the pool tilted, resuling in a small but persistent tendency of the water to dribble out into the yard. That, of course, just caused more subsidence, which caused more outflow, etc., etc. The pond's water level kept dropping, and I was perplexed until I finally (Sherlock-like) figured it out. Now the hose from the pump comes up between some of the side rocks, so the water flows out over the rocks and the waterfall appears to be a sort of natural spring. Much nicer, though the birds lost a bath in the process.

My grandmother had, for a long time, collected large-ish, interesting-looking rocks from her trips to Missouri and elsewhere, and graciously permitted me to denude her front garden. Now geologically-interesting rocks rise up out of the shallow end of the pond around the waterfall.

I’ll update and add information to this page from time to time: blueprints of the pond, more detailed construction and maintenance tips, and further fascinating tales of the fish.

Update 8/4/00... The tadpoles have, in fact, turned into three frogs: one is now fist-sized, the other two are slightly smaller. I have no idea whether this reflects some sort of gender distinction or not (I sort of hope it does, for the sake of future frogly generations. Otherwise I may have to get out the disco and showtune tapes...) The larger frog (pictured on the main page banner) is not shy, and will permit me to come quite close for photographing and observation. The other two are more skittish, and tend to flee into the water when approached. The larger one has just started to make frog noises: Extremely Loud Frog noises, in fact, audible from inside the house and far from the pond (I'm sure the neighbors will be thrilled). It's very cool, though, to be in a fairly urban environment and have a frog croaking and gulping outside.

The fish population problem has been slightly corrected, I think thanks to the rapidly-growing frogs. I'm down to about two dozen fish, from a high of nearly forty at one point early in the spring (they're kinda hard to count). I'm thinking the frogs may have eliminated the smaller fish, which might help account for their phenomenal growth this spring and summer.

My battle against cloudy water continues. I stubbornly refuse to install elaborate filtering systems, relying instead on the humidifier filter-wrapped pump in a basket with gravel. That "system" requires pretty much weekly cleaning, or the water becomes cloudy. My occassional Ph checks show it to be fine for fish, perhaps because the warm weather requires regular "topping off" with fresh water. Much of the cloudyness seems to be due to the large-ish frogs kicking up much from the bottom, so there's not much to be done about that. (I COULD clean the bottom, I suppose, and probably will next spring.) I find that Accu-Clear works well as a nontoxic clearing agent: it sticks the particles together and sinks 'em down to the bottom.

Catastrophes. OK, so one evening I was "topping off" the pond and I, well, left the hose in the pond sort of ... overnight. In the morning, the water was crystal clear (having been 100% replaced), the area around the pond was well watered and fertilized, and the fish were cowering in the bottom. I wasn't sure whether the cowering was because the water temperature had dropped and the pond was chilly, or if they were suffering from shock due to the tap water. Unfortunately, I had no dechlorinator handy, and had to go to work. Fortunately, no harm was done, and everyone's fine.

Update 11/26/00... I netted the pond just in time to avoid the deluge of leaves that normally accompanies fall around here (though a large number managed to slip in anyway). A few days ago I removed the net, skimmed the straggling leaves out of the pond, cleaned the gunk out of the filter and bid the fish and frogs and folks a fond farewell 'til spring. Then it became Cold. Extremely, bitterly, nastily cold--a cold that reminds us that we are living in the midwest and not Sunny Florida or southern California. The pond got its first ice last week, about 1/8" thick everywhere but just around the waterfall. The fish did their Get-Very-Quiet thing down at the bottom, and were visible as orange blurs through the ice: winter makes the water VERY clear. The frogs have not been seen for about two weeks now--one was peering at me with considerable annoyance from a partially-submerged pot the last I saw, at which time I strongly recommended to it that it was getting chilly and perhaps time to go hide. The suggestion seems to have been taken. A little warmish spell (40s) during the Thanksgiving Weekend seems to have energized the fish slightly, and they've been seen swimming slowly near the surface. They are probably trying to tell me how hungry they are, and sucking in their little fishy cheeks and trying to look pathetic, but I understand from various Experts that feeding them in the wintertime is not good, since their metabolisms have slowed considerably. I feel a little guilty when they give me their We're-So-Cold-And-Hungry-Eyes, but what can I do? Perhaps I need to find a winter hobby other than trying to figure out fishes' facial expressions...