Building the perfect garden pond for your backyard can either be a do-it-yourself activity or you can hire a professional to do it for you. It’s really not that hard but does require some research and a certain amount of knowledge about backyard pond landscaping in order to get it right. Here is a brief look at the requirements for building a backyard pond to enhance your landscape.
Situate the Pond
Basically the first step in backyard pond landscaping is to find a suitable spot to dig a hole. The size and depth of the pond should be proportional to the size of your yard. A liner will also be needed for the pond. You can buy and place a prefabricated fiberglass piece or have the choice of free forming your pond with PVC liner material. In any case, a liner is a must to keep the water from draining.
If you are planning to have fish in the pond, you have to make sure that the pond is deep enough for them. In colder climates, the pond should be deeper than the frost line, making sure that the fish have enough room to live throughout the winter.
Don’t place the pond near trees, shaded, or low areas. Plant life, especially lilies, and fish need the warmth of the sun. Falling leaves can also accumulate quickly and cause a cleaning nightmare. In low lying areas, any large volume of rainwater runoff will enter the pond. Rainwater runoff may contain chemicals coming from pesticides and fertilizers which can be harmful to pond plants and fish.
Filtration
Pond landscaping also requires the owners to put some thought into how to filter off the waste that accumulates in it. A good thing to remember is that the bigger the water area the better it can handle the waste coming from the fish. Keep in mind that you will need to put some kind of substrate or gravel so that a bacteria bed can build up and help maintain the water in good quality. You can buy good filters and gravel at your local pet store.
Filters can also help to ensure that your pond doesn’t become a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Mosquitoes lay their eggs on still waters, so anything that agitates the eggs will eliminate this concern. Filters help keep the water clean, but regular cleaning is still needed to maintain the overall quality of the pond.
If you are incorporating pond landscaping into your backyard in order to keep a school of goldfish or other kinds of fish, wait until you have covered the bottom with gravel and installed a good filtering machine. Like an aquarium or a fish tank, you should introduce fish to the pond one at a time. Allow some time for the environment of the pond to adjust with the population. If you dump all of the fish you intend to place in the pond, they probably will not survive the environment because the natural filtering of the bacteria will not be able to handle the waste of the fish and their food.
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